Dragon: Allie's War Book Nine (100 page)

Well, the first time since he’d been himself again, at least.

I saw his eyes nearly glowing with light, standing out in his too-pale face as he met my gaze. He had the beginnings of five o’clock shadow and he looked too goddamned pale and underfed and tired. Even with the hostility seething off his light, it was still difficult to keep my hands off him. It would have been damned near impossible if he hadn’t been refusing to look at me for the last twenty or so minutes.

“I thought you said you couldn’t use him?” he said, still staring at me.

I shrugged, exhaling even as I felt him looking at me again, examining my light while trying to pretend like he wasn’t. I didn’t try to push him away, but I didn’t exactly open to him either. I told myself I didn’t want him distracted right then…any more than both of us were already, from the amount of time it had been, from being forced so intensely back into each other’s light, from all of the crap of the last eight months…the unbelievable amount of pain I could feel seething just past the barest edges of both of our aleimi.

I knew the distraction thing was even true…but I didn’t probe my thinking too closely there, either.

“We worked it out,” I said, throwing up my hands in another seer’s shrug.

That time, I felt a harder pulse of anger off him.

“Yeah,” he grunted. “I got that, wife.”

“Revik,” I said, my voice warning. “We’re not going to talk about this now.”

He nodded, his expression unreadable.

Even so, when I walked closer to him, he stepped back, a near flinch.

“Revik…”

“I heard you,” he said. He met my gaze, his clear eyes empty, even as I felt the hotter warning on his light. “We’re not going to talk about this now…I agree.”

I bit my lip, nodding as I remained where I was, watching him from the wall.

“We don’t have much time,” he reminded me.

I nodded again, but he’d gone back to ignoring me as he made his way to the near-invisible doorway in the stone and organic wall. We’d been hearing gunfire for the last hour, pretty much within minutes of the network coming down. Most of that gunfire remained distant, if increasingly loud from the sheer amount of it and the heavier artillery.

Some of it was moving closer though. I could tell a portion of the fighting had moved deeper into the City, including to the edges of the Royal Compartments.

I watched Revik as he bent down, finding the rock he’d jammed in the opening between the door and the wall. I focused on the cuts and bruises on his long fingers as he began to pry open the organic paneling. Widening the gap, he jammed his foot and leg into the opening before he tried to remove the rock.

In the early morning light, I could see just how good the disguise on the door really was. Even at the edges, the door looked like mortar and brick, unbroken except for where Revik’s pale fingers wrapped around the organic skin.

“I should go with you…” I said again.

But he shook his head. “No. I’ll be faster alone.”

“What about the Lao Hu?” I said, biting my lip. “We still might need to evacuate them. Especially with you blowing shit up underground. They won’t listen to you. They might listen to me…”

He didn’t look back, keeping his eyes on the open panel as he shook his head.

“I agree,” he said, exhaling. “But you can’t do it from here. Not now, in the middle of a gunfight. They’ll shoot me on sight…probably you, too, given who you are to me.” I felt another pulse of pain leave his light, right before he glanced over his shoulder. When he went on, his voice sounded gruffer, almost forced. “Use Brooks,” he said. “Maybe it will give them some common ground after this.”

“Revik…”

“Allie, I need to go inside…you don’t.”

“Why?” I said, frustrated. “Can’t we do that from a distance, too?”

He shook his head. “That bunker is too deep. Even nukes won’t touch it, and I’m not leaving that goddamned machine alive down there…”

“But Revik, how would you even––”

“There was a fusion reactor,” he said, answering me bluntly without meeting my gaze. “I walked right by the fucking thing the last time I was in there…I know where it is.” Exhaling, he clicked at me softly, still not quite meeting my gaze. “Allie, you need to go. Talk to Brooks. Get her to evacuate the City, if you can. When was the exit planned for?”

“Four hours,” I said. “That’s the default. They said to call to move it up.”

Revik nodded. “We won’t need that much time. Give me an hour for set up. Ninety minutes if you’re nervous. That’s plenty of time. I can easily get in and out of there and to a reasonable pick up point by sixty. Two hours for full evac.”

“Jasek was going to default to the airport,” I told him. “Do you still want that?”

Revik frowned. I could almost feel him thinking.

“I’d prefer to have a backup,” he said. “In case it runs longer than I’m expecting.”

“So initial here,” I said. “Tiananmen. Secondary at the airport. I think that works better anyway. They can pick you up here and drive you there, unless you get held up.” Hesitating, I added, “Final rendezvous is some place on the coast. Dalian, it’s called…it’s in China still, but pretty close to North Korea.”

Watching him as he checked the second magazine I’d given him, I bit my lip, blurting, “I’ll tell them ninety minutes for Tiananmen, okay? You really should try to make that one. You’d have to get to the airport on your own if it’s more than that…or the pickup point outside the main gate if it’s under that. I want us out of China this morning.”

“I can do that.”

“The airport’s not that close, Revik.”

“Make it two hours for set up then, to be safe,” he said, checking his watch. “Two and a half for the evac. Oh-nine-thirty for Tiananmen. If I don’t make it, I’ll steal a car.”

I bit my lip, fighting not to tell him that might not be all that easy, either.

He knew that, of course.

I also knew he’d find a way.

When I fell silent that time, he looked over his shoulder at me, exhaling in a series of clicks.

“Allie. If I do what we’re talking about, it will take out most of the City, aboveground and below. You need to go. You need to get out of here and warn them. You know damned well they’re not going to want to abandon the City. Voi Pai definitely won’t. It will take some persuading…that should come from Brooks. Or you.”

“What if the Lao Hu go after you?” I said. “Trap you down there?”

He shook his head. “They won’t. Not with the City’s construct down. They can’t bring me down alone and they know it.”

“But what about Dragon?” I said, still not wanting to leave him. “You said you saw him in there…in the gardens.”

“He didn’t hurt me,” Revik said.

Exhaling and clicking, I grimaced, remembering the bare bones of their exchange. “You said he was fucking
eating
someone, Revik…raw. Anyway, he might hurt you this time. You don’t know.”

I watched him stare off for a second or two, as if thinking. Then he shook his head, frowning slightly as he combed his fingers through his hair.

“No,” he said. “No, I don’t think so. He’s not here for me.”

I bit my lip, wanting to argue with him again. Even so, I found myself thinking I knew what he meant. Dragon wasn’t here for Revik…not anymore.

Maybe he never had been.

Revik and I were just…I don’t know…stepping stones along the way.

At that particular moment I couldn’t make myself care about any of that, though. Thinking about Dragon or what his motives might be was just more white noise.

I didn’t want to leave him.

I didn’t want to fucking
leave
him here, not for an hour…not even for ten minutes. I didn’t much care if it made sense or not. I wanted to scream at him about
no separations
, about agreements we’d made…vows we’d taken…but some part of me knew it wouldn’t be a good idea to bring any of that up right then.

So I just stood there, watching his back as Revik rearranged his grip on the edge of the disguised organic, yanking it open the rest of the way with an effort, his tattooed forearm and shoulder straining. Once he got it open about four feet, he inserted his body through, peering around the edge of the opening to scan the garden and nearby trees.

I watched him, feeling my heart pounding harder in my chest.

I couldn’t seem to make myself walk away from him.

I couldn’t make myself walk away.

“Allie.” Revik turned, sliding back behind the stone wall.

He kept his foot propped in the opening.

That time, before I could read the look on his face, he caught hold of the front of my dress, pulling me towards him. When I looked up at him, meeting his gaze, there were tears in his eyes.

“I don’t want to talk now,” he said, his German accent thicker. “I don’t.”

I nodded, fighting to control my light. “Okay.”

Leaning down, he kissed me, shocking me with the contact even as I felt pain expand off his light. The taste and shape of his mouth shocked me more, making my own pain exponentially worse. I felt that obsessive thing there as his aleimi slid into mine, as I felt that reaction coil through him again, a near-violence twisted into anger right before he pulled away.

He liked the dress. He also hated that I was wearing it.

He was fighting not to make a crack about it.

He didn’t let go of me, though.

“I love you,” he said, meeting my gaze.

His words came out hard. His jaw clenched as he looked at me, his clear eyes brightening more. I felt it that time. I felt the emotion behind his words. I felt that love even as my heart clenched, feeling like I was going to suffocate from all of the pain that pulsed off him as he looked at me. I felt jealousy on him too, but that fierceness of love briefly overshadowed the rest.

When he exhaled, wiping his face, I felt his pain worsen.

Pulling me closer, he leaned his face against mine. “I’d do it for you again, Allie…all of it,” he murmured. “I swear I would…I’d do anything for you, wife. No regrets. None. Okay?”

I nodded, grasping his arms. I held onto him tightly, maybe too tightly, my fingers and light desperate as I fought to control myself, to keep from wrapping myself around him, pulling him away from that opening in the wall.

He didn’t let me hold onto him for long, though.

Disentangling his arms, he kissed me again, more lingeringly that time.

“We knew it might come to this,” he said. Clasping my fingers, he pulled my hand and arm closer to his chest, closer to his heart. “Allie…we knew. Both of us. You can’t blame yourself, Allie. You can’t…okay? I love you.”

I nodded, fighting to breathe, to even see him clearly.

I stared down at the grass, still fighting to breathe, still feeling like I was suffocating.

“Revik,” I told him. “Revik…I love you…”

But he’d already let go of me.

“…More than anything,” I said. “More than anything, Revik…”

I looked up.

But he was already gone.

He’d disappeared through the opening in the wall before I could even finish saying it.