Dragon: Allie's War Book Nine (4 page)

Revik felt his jaw harden.

Allie.

Fucking Allie. Of course.

His arm tightened around her even as he thought it. He looked down at her sleeping face, fighting a sudden perverse desire to shake her. A mixture of love, exasperation and more of that heat coiled back and through his light, making his frustration worse.

Focusing back on the Barrier, he tore his eyes off her, fighting to think.

They were going after Shadow’s network. That was good.

He was glad Allie hadn’t waited for him for that.

But it wouldn’t be enough.

It wouldn’t be anywhere near enough.

If Menlim could make him turn on his own wife…

Brother,
Balidor began, clicking at him sharply. Frustration seethed off the Adhipan seer’s light.
Brother…please do not contemplate anything drastic at this point. We have discussed several different scenarios, in addition to the hunting of Network seers. We are not blind to the urgency of our current situation…

Revik nodded again.

His mind remained elsewhere, however.

He could feel the barest edges of something already fighting its way into his brain. He could feel the danger there. He could feel how easily he might go too far, how many different ways he could fuck up or things could go spiraling off course.

He didn’t need anyone to tell him what a goddamned long shot it would be. He knew the greater likelihood would be that he’d just get himself and his family killed all the faster.

Without knowing a fucking thing in terms of details and no matter how many precautions he took, pulling anything like that off would take a goddamned miracle.

Even so, once there, the bare kernel of that idea was hard to dig it out.

Nephew,
Tarsi cautioned.
Now is not the time to act rashly…whatever your concerns for your family’s safety.

Revik nodded. Once, seer-fashion.

He didn’t really answer her, though.

He agreed in principle.

At the same time, that kernel of thought had already started to take root.

It was too early to know what it would look like if he let it grow and branch out and become something workable…or what would happen to it when he brought his wife into his thinking. She had this tendency to make his already crazy ideas even more crazy.

Like batshit, full-blown irresponsible crazy.

But the idea was there and Revik knew it wouldn’t be going anywhere, not until he’d let it run its course. Not until he’d talked to his wife about it, at least.

He knew one thing for certain.

This wouldn’t happen again.

It wouldn’t.

Not if it meant cutting his own throat.

2

EIGHT MONTHS, FIVE DAYS

"We both knew this would happen. We saw it…" he murmured.

Without thinking, I answered him.

“So we know it'll be all right,” I said. “That it'll all work out all right in the end…”

I trailed, then looked over at him sharply.

Meeting his gaze, I swallowed. A dark, swift, sinking feeling filled my gut, like something in there was kicking at me, making me bleed on the inside.

That feeling was fear, I realized.

Terror maybe. The sudden stab of déjà vu that came from our exchange of words only made that fear worse. But it wasn’t déjà vu really…it was memory. And I could say that with utter certainty now, because I was a seer after all.

Photographic memory.

So yeah, I knew immediately where I’d heard those words before.

The night of our wedding. Tarsi’s cakes.

Revik and I said those exact words to one another as we looked into our future together, under the spell of those crazy cakes and a lot of wine and not enough sex. Even then, it hadn’t been two strands, it had been one.

One that broke somewhere along the way.

One that hurt like hell…even when I couldn’t remember the specifics.

I glanced over at the couch, where Lily slept.

One small arm curled under her dark head. Her clear, green-rimmed eyes were closed now, framed in dark lashes under an already narrower-looking face. I watched her almost clinically in those few seconds, looking her over in a way I couldn’t while she was awake.

She looked older to me again. She’d lost some of the baby fat she’d worn what seemed like only weeks before, that same cute, dimply layer that made her so utterly squeezable. She was losing that layer too fast, faster than even a human. Its loss made her look older, childlike in a way that appeared different to me already…more like a little girl and less like a baby.

She was beautiful. So beautiful it still took my breath.

“…We knew it, love,” he repeated, softer.

I nodded, fighting tears.

I knew. I knew he was right.

But I really really wished I didn’t.

An explosion ripped through the silence of the late afternoon light, jerking my eyes up.

It got all of us to our feet, staring down from the roof of the thirty-story apartment building where we worked. I looked west with the rest of them, holding my breath. Raising a hand to shield the sun, I gazed towards the line of the horizon.

My eyes found the snaking curve of river reflecting sunlight first.

Then I saw the smoke.

Pretty much due west, from the lines of the sun.

I was still staring when a second detonation went off.

I ducked in reflex. Before I’d straightened, a third, larger one detonated along a different part of the wall, causing all of us to flinch, and many of the seers next to me jerk back from the edge of the roof. Glancing to my right, I saw Jorag lower his arm from where he’d used it instinctively to shield his face, even though we were more than a mile from the blast.

He frowned at the horizon even as I watched.

Black smoke plumed up. Again, I raised a hand to shield my eyes.

For a moment I forgot what we’d been doing as I watched the scene unfold.

Sirens went off, even as I heard distant staccato bursts of what sounded like automatic rifle fire. I cursed a little under my breath as the breach siren wound higher.

It wasn’t our siren, of course. It belonged to the Thai humans.

The Mythers were trying to breach their wall. Again.

I’d been hearing about this kind of thing on the feeds, even before we got here. It wasn’t only happening in Thailand. These more systematic and better-armed attempts to break into enclave communities from the outside had been springing up all over. We didn’t know if Shadow’s people were behind it, not for certain, but I strongly suspected they were.

I figured they had to be funding it, at least, even if they weren’t involved directly.

Anyway, this had the stink of Menlim all over it, from the weirdo apocalyptic religious crap to what it seemed to be doing to the human population. Divide and conquer, keep everyone afraid and traumatized, willing to act impulsively, violently…and stupidly.

It might have been boring in its repetition if it wasn’t so consistently effective.

Adding that darker injection of religious fanaticism just made it all worse.

You couldn’t reason with these fuckers, whether they were being actively brainwashed by Shadow and his people or not.

All of it seemed calculated to divide the human populations further and get them to turn on one another even more. Also, yeah, so far they’d solely targeted non-Shadow cities and enclaves, so there was that. The feeds claimed that was because security measures were too impenetrable in the Dreng cities, but I had serious doubts that was all of it.

I was still watching the smoke rise on that end of the wall when a voice rose in my headset.

“Hey,” he said, impatient. “What’s going on? Are we all right to continue?”

I clicked softly, my lips firming.

I looked down to the streets around the hotel itself, looking for any increased activity from the blast. There was plenty, but it was all heading away from us, not towards us. Civilians were locking their doors. The militia was heading for the wall on the other side of the river.

I clicked over into the Barrier construct I was helping to hold since we didn’t have anything permanent in place yet. I pinged Wreg in the same set of seconds.

Hey,
I said to him.
We okay? Revik wants to know.

I practically heard Wreg’s snort, even with the wind and from all the way across the roof.

Of course he does,
Wreg muttered.
Tell him we’ve split off part of the team to monitor the area of the bomb, but we should have more than enough to cover his end. I was considering sending Chan down there…since they haven’t left yet. What do you think?

I nodded, once.

Before I answered Revik, I sent a packed message to Balidor conveying everything Wreg just told me, including the part about Chandre.

Tell him yes on Chan,
Balidor sent back at once.
Unless you disagree?

No, I agree,
I assured him.
Thanks. And let me know if anything changes down by that wall. Can you coordinate with Chan directly?

When I felt Balidor acquiesce, I switched my focus back to Revik, unshielding my light.

We’re all good,
I assured him.
Balidor’s monitoring the situation on the wall. You don’t need to worry about that. And I’m staying away from those lights, too.

I felt Revik relax…slightly…but he still felt wound up.

I didn’t bother to ask why.

Good,
he sent.
Then we’re ready to go down here…

I passed that on to Wreg, too.

It was weird acting as translator for Revik of all people, but they didn’t want him tied in too closely to our main security constructs right now, for obvious reasons. I was only in part of those same constructs for the same obvious reasons. Wreg acted as a go-between too, keeping my light in an area of the construct that had been sequestered off from the most high-level security segments. They’d restructured all of those constructs in the last few weeks, too.