Dragon: Allie's War Book Nine (94 page)

I felt my light react, but it made me panic that time. It nearly hurt me, too, right before I clamped a shield down over us without thought. He helped me with the shield, but only kissed me again after he came up for air, harder than the first time.

When we finally parted, I could barely breathe.

“I have to go,” I told him, panting, pushing at his chest. “I have to go, Jem…please. Please let me go…”

Looking down at me, he let his mouth harden. Then he nodded. His green eyes turned infiltrator-still, like two panes of tinted glass.

“Goodbye, Alyson,” he said.

He released me, stepping back. For a moment we only looked at one another, me still trying to catch my breath and him staring at me with that expressionless face.

I felt like I should say something. Anything.

As soon as I thought it, he frowned, pain flickering back over his expression.

“Go,” he said. He made a shooing gesture with one hand, his mouth still hard. “Go, Allie. I’ll make sure Balidor and the others are ready. Go do your part in this.”

Hesitating a last time, I only nodded.

Then I turned.

Still fighting to control my light, I broke into a run.

I could barely see as I aimed my feet, making my way swiftly to the end of the alley. I knew where I was now; I knew the exact streets that would lead me to the back end of the City. Wrapping the scarf tighter around my head and hair, I pulled it down to cover the lower half of my face before I gripped the satchel where I’d slung it around my back.

I was nearly running by the time I got to the end of the alley.

Even so, I didn’t get far enough, fast enough to evade the dense pulse of pain I felt off of Jem’s light.

Revik lay on a dense cushion, looking up at a carved wooden ceiling. A female lay next to him. He didn’t remember her name.

She called him brother Sword…

She’d been kind to him, but he couldn’t remember her name.

He couldn’t remember precisely when she’d come here…or if she’d been here before.

He frowned, fighting to coil together strands in the lower part of his light.

He decided it didn’t matter.

He unfurled the warm covers with the silk covering, relieved to feel the cool air. Then he sat up and began moving his body off the cushion slowly, carefully. He could see no reason to wake her, since she seemed to prefer to sleep.

Come alone…he remembered that being important for some reason. The secret there tugged at him, even as he remembered the white horse.

The horse was there. He could almost see it inside his mind’s eye.

He dressed quietly, throwing a shirt over his head, pulling on pants.

He found his shoes outside the round wooden door, and put his feet into them, remembering the small rocks in that part of the garden, thinking they might not feel very good on the soles of his bare feet. He was thirsty, but he would drink from one of the waterfalls, he decided. The water was clean, used for the humans and the plants, so it would not hurt him.

He walked leisurely across the grounds.

A full moon shone over his path. It blotted out the stars in a cool ring around where it stood in the sky, but it was beautiful, filled with detail…larger than he remembered. He got shivers of feeling from that rock in the sky, the weight of it lingering in his mind as he touched it with his light. He didn’t dislike the feeling, but its alienness intrigued him.

He walked through the darkened gardens, alone.

Or he thought he was alone.

When he had nearly reached the first stretch of wall, he discovered he wasn’t.

Alone, that is.

Another seer was there.

Revik saw the seer under a tree. It crouched in the dark, some faint glow around its face. Something that trickled with lesser wisps of living light lay at his feet.

It was a male seer, Revik realized.

He was eating something.

Revik walked over to him, curious.

“Hello, brother,” he said, once he’d gotten close enough.

The seer’s head jerked up and around, as if Revik had startled him.

Revik held up a hand to reassure him.

“I did not mean to alarm you,” he said politely. “What is that you have there, brother?”

The seer rose slowly to his feet. He moved precisely, gracefully, like some kind of great cat. Revik followed those motions with his eyes, feeling some stirring in a lower part of him, some memory. Fighting. His uncle told him he used to like to fight.

He told him that he’d liked it very much.

Memories flickered through his light. Of flesh hitting flesh…of moving feet and hands. But not only that. Not only pain and avoidance. Strategy. Fun.

Like chess,
someone said to him once.

Yes, brother,
the seer in front of him said.
Yes. Very much like that. Was it your wife who said that to you?

Revik frowned, staring at the shadowed form of the seer.

The seer smiled in reassurance, his white teeth shining in the dark.

Revik noticed then that his mouth had some dark juice on it, something thicker than most of the drinks he’d been handed in the City.

Coppery and tangy, it smelled like…

“Blood,” he said. Revik looked down reflexively at his own hands. Seeing nothing there, he returned his gaze to the male seer. For the first time, he noticed they were nearly identical in height. That was unusual. “Are you hurt, brother?” he asked him.

No. No, I am not hurt
…

The seer stepped closer to him.

Revik was not alarmed. He still felt mostly curiosity around this tall seer. He watched him move, saw his face leave the shadow of the trees as he did. Revik saw the tint of red to accompany that coppery smell, saw the male’s long dark hair as he shook it back from an angular face. The lower part of that face and neck were covered in the same dark liquid, what Revik now knew without a doubt to be blood. But whose blood?

Revik remembered that he had been eating…

Then something else pulled his eyes and mind, causing him to stare.

The male seer’s eyes.

Clear eyes, they glowed faintly with a pale green light.

Something in that glow pulled at him, nearly got him hard.

Moreover, it allowed him to see. They illuminated his face and neck, and the irises themselves just enough that he could see the color behind that glow, the lack of color, a pale tint like glass where they caught the edge of the softer light of the moon.

The seer had colorless eyes.

His eyes glowed.

A scar ran across the front of his face. Revik had seen similar scars on other seers. It confused his impressions of the seer’s features at first, as did his longer hair, crow-black hair that fell past his shoulders in a shaggy line.

But that face…

“You are like me,” Revik said, wonder in his voice.

Yes, brother
…

“You…look like me,” Revik said.

I do,
the seer sent warmly. …
You are my brother
…
we are brothers. Real ones.

“Brothers.” Revik frowned, puzzled.

He didn’t have a brother.

But his mind paused, even as he thought it.

He remembered another seer.

That one didn’t look like him, though. He had yellow eyes, dark red hair…

Yes,
the clear-eyed seer agreed.
He is your brother, too.

Revik continued to gaze at those faintly glowing, clear eyes, touched past where he could speak. His mind fought with the information, with the many many questions he suddenly wanted to ask. None of them felt important though. None of them felt right.

“Why are you here, brother?” he said finally.

Then understanding reached him.

Once it had, it caught in his throat, nearly brought tears to his eyes.

“Are you here for me?” he said, fighting the emotion in his voice.

For a long moment, the clear-eyed seer only looked at him.

Then, after what felt like a long pause…

The seer smiled.

I crouched with a gun in my hand, leaning against a tree with scratchy bark. As far as the gun itself, I’d brought the Desert Eagle, one of the first handguns I’d ever fired back in that basement range of Ullysa’s in Seattle.

I didn’t want to think about Seattle right then, though.

That sick feeling in my stomach and light had grown unbearable.

It was late. Late enough that I was worried almost beyond where I could think. I fought to decide what I should do if he didn’t show up. I thought about what Jem said, about Revik not understanding me…possibly not even hearing me, not consciously at least. I wasn’t sure where that left me, though, if he couldn’t.

Storm the wall? Go apeshit with the telekinesis?

I knew I might actually have the Lao Hu on my side if I tried something like that, even Voi Pai. That would have been true anyway, given the occupation, but might be especially true if I told them what was going on with Brooks. On the other hand, I knew Menlim would probably just flip the switch on Revik as soon as he felt me there, and it would be Dubai all over again.

No, I wouldn’t get very far. Not with the construct live. Chances were, I wouldn’t be able to use the telekinesis at all inside of those walls.

I wanted to go inside anyway, of course.

I knew that wasn’t exactly coming from a “rational” place, but I also knew I might not be able to stop myself if Revik didn’t come out on his own.

I already had direct line of sight on the door I knew to be there, even though I couldn’t see it. Hell, I knew I might be standing too close already; I would only be risking both of us if I got too near the edges of the construct while Revik was still inside. I figured it had to start somewhere at the edge of those trees, but I wasn’t about to use my light to verify that.

I could feel the dawn coming. I could fucking feel it.

Somehow I knew it was tonight or never.