Allie's War Season Three (166 page)

"Hey," Jon said, swallowing. "We just talked about this, right?" Feeling his light react sharply when he felt the other man's erection, he fought to pull away. "Didn't we just talk about this? Cut it out, man...seriously. I can't deal with this right now..."

But Wreg barely seemed to hear him. His dark eyes studied Jon's face, as if oblivious to the pain coming off both of them.

"This is permanent, Jon. You understand that, right?" Swallowing when Jon looked up at his words, Wreg made a vague gesture with the hand not holding Jon's bare back. "...This is not me being rational," he added. "I love you...I don't want you to regret this. I don't want you to agree to something that you might view as harm later. I want to make sure you understand what this means. It won't be like any relationship you've had before..."

His words cut off when Jon gripped him tightly around the back. He held him tighter when Wreg closed his eyes, sending the taller seer a harder, more deliberate pulse. Wrapping his arms around Wreg's body, Jon found himself fighting to control his light again.

"I know it's permanent," Jon said. "I know that, I really do. But honestly, that is such an impossible idea to me, I can only go with what I know right now." He hesitated, swallowing as he tried to smile. "At this point, I'm just really hoping you aren't actually multiple-personality guy, like my sister's husband...or some kind of closet sociopath..."

Wreg smiled, even as his light grew softer. Something in it grew sadder, too.

"There's still a lot you don't know about me, brother," he said.

Jon sighed, nodding. Remembering the glimpses he'd gotten of the rebel base, as well as things Allie had told him, both about the last rebellion and the one that happened during World War I, he nodded again, feeling his chest constrict a little.

"Yeah.” He shrugged lightly, without moving away from where he leaned on Wreg. "Do you want me to know more? Before we do this, I mean?"

Wreg hesitated, and Jon felt the other seer's light on his again, maybe even scanning him.

After another pause, Wreg nodded, as if making up his mind.

"I think so, yes,” he said. His voice held a thread of nerves, but Jon didn’t hear any avoidance there. “…I think you should know a few things. Before we go into the sex thing, I think. I would rather you see me clearly, Jon. Or as much as possible, anyway...given the number of years I’d have to relate for you to get a complete picture..." He hesitated, shrugging again. "It is tradition, to interview others, even. You could speak to Tarsi...and Nenz. There are others in the rebels who would know more, too. I will give you names, if you like. Most of them would be happy to share memories with you. You have the right to ask that, as well...for Barrier views of my past, if you like..."

He sounded worried that time, but Jon only nodded, feeling his shoulders relax a little.

"Okay. Yeah, man."

That worry intensified briefly in Wreg's light.

He seemed about to say one thing, then abruptly changed his mind. "So what do we tell the others, then?" Wreg said instead. "Should we wait on that, as well?"

Jon sent him reassurance, even as he opened his own light more. "We still have to tell them something, Wreg," he said, sighing. "We've got to warn them. You get that, right? If you start telling me things about yourself and I can't handle it, and need to wait on the rest...they'll understand." Sighing again, he shrugged with his hand before adding, "If we
don't
tell them, and you tell me things about yourself and it brings us closer...close enough that we start having sex again...as in disappear for weeks, having sex...it's going to complicate their lives. A lot."

Wreg nodded, relaxing. "Fair, yes. You are right."

Jon extracted himself gently from the seer's arms.

"So we tell them," he said, his voice more decisive than he really felt. Sighing a bit, he picked the clean shirt up off the table where he'd left it, and pulled it over his head, still conscious of the other's eyes on him.

Wreg only nodded to his words, his face impassive, but Jon noticed he didn't move, either, watching Jon from only a few feet away as he finished taking off his old clothes and putting on the new ones.

Wreg didn't avert his gaze the whole time Jon changed, but watched him, his face unreadable, even when Jon peeled off the old socks with a grimace and put on the new ones, stuffing his feet back into the mud-encrusted combat boots. He felt better. He still wanted a shower almost desperately, but he definitely felt better.

Wreg didn't start to pull off his own shirt, removing his belt to transfer to the new pants, until Jon was already stuffing his dirty clothes into the cloth bag the concierge seer had left behind. Jon still felt the seer's eyes on him, his light unreadable where it coiled around Jon's own. The ex-rebel wore a cloak that Jon had never felt on him before, one that covered Wreg's aleimi almost totally, even as it held onto Jon's as if his life depended on it.

It crossed Jon's mind that maybe it actually did.

But he couldn't really think about that yet, either.

13

UNVEILINGS

I GOT TO the bar a lot later than I'd planned.

I went over most of the transcripts of Balidor’s interviews with Ditrini, not long after I got out of Ditrini’s cell, but frankly, it wasn’t all that helpful, even with Tenzi, Garend and Anale there to press for details.

I tried contacting Tarsi, too, to get her opinion on the thing with my light, but unfortunately, she wasn’t available. I wasn’t sure exactly where she was, but the impression I got from one of her attendants was that she might be in some kind of extended Barrier-state, like a meditation or a trance. Either way, I wouldn’t be able to ask her anything until she came out, and it sounded like that would be a few more days, at least.

I'd
almost
been tempted to go in and try to talk to Ditrini again, see if we could up his dosage of hallucinogens enough to get anything more from him, not only on me but on whatever he might know about Shadow's plans for Beijing...or New York, for that matter.

That was about when I felt the next questioning ping from Revik.

Instead of trying to explain what I'd been doing, I found myself answering him pretty abruptly, and ending the conversation before he could feel much off me. I wasn't about to lob my worries about Ditrini having screwed up my aleimi somehow, much less the fact that it might have something to do with Balidor’s fears around Shadow having a presence in New York, not long-distance anyway, not when I knew what Revik’s probable reaction would be that I'd gone in to speak to Ditrini at all. I knew he and Balidor were still concerned that I was too connected to the Lao Hu anyway, and that this kind of thing would only make it worse.

I also knew under normal circumstances, that caution would be more than warranted.

But these weren’t normal circumstances, and I was feeling the ticking clock over my head again, in more ways than one. Besides, we didn't have a lot of proprietary information
left
at this point, from what I could tell. Apart from the contents of the lists themselves, I was pretty sure most of what we had, had made its way to Shadow already. I couldn't even be sure about the lists, truthfully, but Balidor and Wreg seemed confident that Shadow didn't have a copy, mostly because the assassination attempts so far only occurred when we approached specific people.

Which made me wonder, again, who put those lists in the bank vault in the first place.

If it had been Shadow, or Menlim, or anyone connected to the Dreng, I would have thought they'd have a copy already.

There were other things I found myself contemplating, too, now that I’d seen everything Balidor got from Ditrini before I showed up. Even things like a potential alliance with the Lao Hu ran through my mind, despite the fact that my past alliances with the Tiger People hadn’t exactly panned out all that well. I knew Balidor likely only said it to rile up Ditrini, anyway, but part of me wasn’t totally convinced we
shouldn't
offer them help, given that both Ditrini and Shadow had clearly turned on the Lao Hu already.

Anyway, it was an awfully large population of seers to just let die out there...whatever personal issues I might have with their leader, Voi Pai.

But yeah, I wasn't about to try and explain all of my reasoning on
that
to Revik long distance, either.

I could tell my absence was stressing Revik out, though, and that I’d pushed my luck on that front already. I couldn’t feel specifics, but flavors reached me through the connection we shared, frequently enough that I knew it was more about me than Jon at this point. So after leaving instructions for Balidor with Tenzi, Garend and Anale, I headed upstairs pretty quickly once I decided I was done, that I needed to pull in the others before going any further.

I knew Revik would be mad that I’d talked to Ditrini.

On the other hand, I also knew him well enough to know that his tactical side always outweighed emotion at times like this...even when he didn't like it. He would probably even agree with my reasons for speaking to Ditrini, even if he didn't like that, either. I was at a point where I wanted his input though, so I was anxious to talk to him.

I still wasn’t looking forward to his reaction when I first laid it on him.

Regardless, I found myself looking for him pretty much the second I'd walked through the entrance of Park Place South. I started to feel for him with my light, too, long before I'd gotten past the horseshoe-shaped fish tank that wound in the direction of the main bar, and now appeared to be full of trout and red snapper. I'd forgotten how dark the bar could get, too, and how loud it could get, especially with the traditional seer music and its heavy percussion thumping in the background.

Once I passed the end of the curved tank, I immediately saw a group of seers clustered around one end of the hardwood bar that took up most of the longest wall. The game fish floating in the bar tanks made mottled patterns over faces, bodies and clothes; it made it difficult to identify anyone at first, since I was reluctant to use my light on anyone I couldn’t see, due to the whole Jon and Wreg thing. I started walking over there, anyway, figuring that had to be my group, since they constituted something like ninety-percent of the daytime patronage.

When I got a few yards closer, though, shock hit my light as I realized Jon and Wreg stood in the very center of that group.

I came to a stop on the carpeted floor, wary in spite of myself.

I watched Wreg briefly where he leaned against the far end of the bar. His eyes followed Jon and a faint smile tugged at his lips, although his face and light looked as exhausted as I'd ever seen him look. Jon leaned against him instead of the bar, not sitting in his lap, but clearly leaning his weight on the larger man's legs. He also looked tired, but not as exhausted as Wreg. Both wore clothes I didn't recognize, including a dark gold t-shirt on Wreg that was probably the lightest-colored
anything
I'd seen on his body, whether in the flesh or in any of the Barrier records from Revik's past.

Once I let myself look at him, though, I found myself staring at Jon more than Wreg, realizing I’d been avoiding looking at him before, maybe because I could sense that something in him had changed yet again.

Staring at him now, I tried to pinpoint what that was, precisely.

For a moment, his hazel eyes, which seemed to get lighter and more strangely calico-looking with each passing day, caught the light glimmering from the tanks, showing an intensity that I don’t think I’d ever seen in them before. His dark blond hair stood in spikes on his head before it tumbled over part of his forehead. His shoulders looked broader than I remembered them, and I realized he somehow looked
taller
than I remembered, too.

It crossed my mind that Jon now looked and felt about ten times tougher than he had back when we lived in San Francisco together, even being multiple black-belt guy.