Allie's War Season Three (25 page)

When my hand tightened in his hair, trying to pull him off, he caught hold of my wrists, pinning them to the bed by my hips.
 

Looking up, he met my gaze, his eyes dense.

I looked back at him, swallowing. "Revik... don't."

He put so much light into his tongue that I groaned, opening enough that his fingers dug into my wrists. He coiled into my light aggressively the second I gave him the opening... I found myself barely able to stay present in the room.
 

When my vision cleared, I could only lie there, gasping as his tongue slid deeper, nearly losing it again until he held me off, gripping parts of my light in a near desperation. He started sending to me in the same instant, letting me know what he wanted, what he intended to do to me, even as he increased the pressure of his mouth.

He was thinking about the handcuffs again, thinking about having his hands free...

"No," I managed. "Revik... don't! I mean it!"

I fought to pry my wrists from his fingers, but couldn't make them budge. I grappled with my light, trying to pull it together enough to get it back in control of his.
 

He shoved my attempts off, violently that time... I felt his light shift, coiling over both of our heads. That desperation around him worsened, turning into a near fear.
 

I felt him gauging where I'd held him before, blocking me when I tried to get close to any of the weak spots in his light... defensive to the point where I could have been an enemy infiltrator. When I tried to get past him, he turned his aleimi on me for real, slamming into me, hard, until I backed off... then going so far into my light that my back arched involuntarily. I let out another cry, struggling against his hold...

Somewhere in that, I knew.
 

I wouldn't stop him. I couldn't even be trusted to try very hard, and he wasn't going to give me the chance.

Which meant I had to do something now.

"Wreg!" I cried out. "Wreg! Please... I need your help..."

Revik raised his head.
 

His hands tightened on me; his eyes narrowed as he comprehended what I'd said. Before I fully tracked the movement in my peripheral vision, he tensed, connecting my words to something he felt. I saw him turn his head, saw his eyes ignite in pale green rings at the threat of an intruder. Then I saw the muscular figure in the doorway, gun propped against his shoulder.

"Revik!" I gripped his fingers. "Wait! Don't hurt him... it's Wreg!"

Wreg must have been ready, though.

He'd already fired the gun before Revik had finished turning around. Something hit Revik in the back, hard enough to bring a grunt to his lips, knocking him into me from the impact. His fingers tightened on me again, even as his eyes widened in disbelief.

Before I could make a sound, he slumped over me, knocked out cold.

I could only lie there, panting, staring down at him.

When I looked up, Wreg was smiling at me wryly, one eyebrow lifted as he lowered the gun.

"If you wanted me dead, princess," he said, pulling back the bolt of the old-fashioned rifle and sliding another tranquilizer dart into the chamber. "...There are easier ways."

Raising the gun once more, he kept his eyes off our naked bodies, using an indirect stare to hold his aim on Revik's back as he walked towards us cautiously. When Revik didn't move after a few seconds, he chuckled a little, making a vague motion with his free hand.

"I think his light's sufficiently open to yours now, Esteemed Bridge," he said. He lowered the gun so that it pointed at the carpet, glancing at my face.

"You okay?"

I nodded, averting my eyes. "Yeah. Thanks."

"Ping me when you're ready to hold for him," he said. The smile touched his voice again as he looked away. "...If you're done 'easing' things for him, that is..."

Still fighting my mind back onto straight lines, I only nodded, biting back a low surge of embarrassment at his words. Or humiliation, more like it.

I tried like hell not to think about how we must look.

Wreg chuckled again, even as he turned.

Seconds later, the door closed behind him with a soft snick.

I found myself looking down at Revik, feeling another stab of guilt as I plucked the dart out of his back where Wreg pretty much bulls-eyed it into the area behind his heart.

Then I struggled to get out from under him, first rolling him over carefully onto his side and then hefting him up the bed as best I could by his shoulders... which wasn't exactly easy, by the way, considering that all six and a half feet of him was essentially dead weight.

I got him most of the way up to the top of the bed, far enough to pull down the bedspread and a blanket, so I could cover him enough that he wouldn't be cold. Sliding one of the pillows under his head, I used another to prop up his back so he wouldn't roll over onto the shrapnel wound while both of us were asleep.

It wasn't until after I finished with him that I fumbled on the floor for my clothes.

After looking at myself, however, I decided I needed a shower first.

I didn't lay down next to him again until I'd come out of his bathroom a few minutes later, fully dressed, my hair wet again and my body more sore than I remembered it being when I'd lain down to sleep in my own room the first time, a few hours earlier.

Even after I curled up next to him, I kept the bulk of the bedspread between us.

Looking at his face, I fought back another wave of guilt when I saw the tautness of his expression. The tension around his eyes eased somewhat once I was with him again, but he still looked like he was in pain, even knocked out. Given that they'd probably shot him with some kind of horse tranquilizer, that was no mean feat...but they always had to over-trank him, given his extreme tolerance to any kind of sedative.

Resting on my back, I fought to relax. I held his hand tightly in one of mine, making sure my light was still wound into his.

Once I was sure I was ready, I pinged Wreg in the hallway outside, fighting embarrassment again when I felt the humor in the light of the seers standing in a cluster on the other side of the door. I knew somewhere in the construct, Balidor was probably grinding his teeth...assuming he wasn't already cursing me out to whoever would listen.

By then, I was so exhausted, it was difficult to care.

I was barely able to keep myself awake long enough to make sure everything was working right when they first started feeding us light. I managed to keep my eyes open long enough to scan the length of the connection, to ensure the flow was reaching Revik's aleimi through me the way it was supposed to...

And that was pretty much it.

That's the last thing I remember, from that day at least.

7

CONFRONTATION

"SO WHERE ARE they?" Jon said. He tossed his jacket to the couch, entering one of the smaller sections of lounge by a standalone bar on the lobby level. It stood in the inner courtyard of the hotel, with a ceiling that stretched all the way up to a domed skylight, complete with an indoor waterfall by the bank of glass elevators on the other side, and a large pool beneath the fountain filled with trees, flowers, a rock formation, and even cages filled with parrots and smaller songbirds. The atrium stood between the two main wings of the hotel, but managed to be the most peaceful place in the entire building. Jon learned it was the best room to look for Wreg, at least when he wasn't on duty or asleep.

For the first time in almost two days, the tattooed seer was neither.

Seeing Wreg's eye roll at his question, Jon let out a disbelieving sound. "They can't possibly be still asleep. It's been...what? Three days?"

"Why are you here, brother?" Wreg said. Glancing behind Jon as if to determine whether he was alone, he made a dismissive flutter with one hand. "Shouldn't you be off, entertaining your boyfriend somewhere...? Reminding each other why two cocks are better than one?"

"Great." Jon's jaw hardened. "...more gay cracks. That's really original, Wreg. Or is this just your new, pathetic attempt to get rid of me?"

Wreg stared up at him, his dark eyes narrowing slightly from where he sat on a gold-colored couch, his arm thrown over its back. When Jon didn't back down, he exhaled air between his lips, turning back to look at the lit waterfall.

Jon watched as the seer's dark eyes scaled upwards, taking in the balconies hanging with ivy and flowering plants without seeming to see them. Instead, Jon saw him frown, his blurred irises showing him briefly to be elsewhere. A little startled at the depth of the anger there, Jon hesitated, staring at him in spite of himself.

"What?" he said. "Did I actually hurt your
feelings,
calling you homophobic? I thought that was
de rigueur
for you military-types..."

"Nenz went into hibernation," Wreg cut in, shrugging without looking up. "It is unusual, as the wound was not so very dangerous...but it happens."

"And what about her?"

"He took her with him," Wreg said, shrugging again with one hand, then laying it back on the couch cushion. He continued to stare at the waterfall. "Also, not without precedent. Mates often do that kind of thing together..."

Jon nodded, still trying to read the seer's face, and now getting a big, blank wall of nothing. He'd meant the military-types thing as a joke, maybe even to lighten things, but obviously it had fallen flat.

But then, he'd never exactly been good at reading Wreg's moods.

Also, he was struggling a bit with Wreg's calm.

"So," Jon said, biting back the tension in his voice as well as he could. "So...the fact that all of Al's friends and schoolmates from her home town are probably dying in droves behind that quarantine wall...you don't think that warrants waking them up?" Watching Wreg's face, Jon felt his jaw start to clench again. He decided to switch to the duty thing, figuring it probably held a lot more weight than his opinion. "So...you really don't think that might be a problem for her later, that you let her sleep through that? No matter how cuddly she and Revik might be feeling...? Do you think Revik will thank you for that, either?"

Wreg rolled his eyes. "Hibernation isn't a nap, brother," he grunted. "Couldn't wake them, even if I wanted. And frankly, I'm glad both of them are sleeping through this. She would want to go there, and he would insist on going with her –– "

"And what?" Jon said. "Are you saying she
shouldn't
go there?"

"I'm saying quarantines exist for a reason, brother Jon." Wreg's eyes shifted up when he turned his head, meeting Jon's directly. "Or are you so anxious to see this thing spread even faster than it is already? If the Bridge went there, even if she cannot get sick from this thing, she would want to bring her people out...people who are already infected, perhaps..." Seeing Jon about to speak, Wreg held up a hand as he went on warningly, his eyes harder on Jon's, "...And might I remind you, we have no way of knowing if she and the Sword are immune to this thing. Whatever they prove definitively with Sark blood, it may not hold true for Elaerian blood. Or are you willing to risk her life to hold up some impractical, human principle, too...?"

"Look," Jon said, fighting his anger with an effort. "Allie would want to know. She would
want
to know. She's not going to be cool with this...I promise you." At the seer's dismissive look, he raised his voice. "What about Cass? We don't even know if she got out. Can't you at least send one seer, to find out where she is, or if –– "