Allie's War Season Three (86 page)

"They will have no need to divide theirs either, if we go that route," Revik said, his voice cautious once more. Leaning over the table, he folded his hands, his eyes on Wreg's. "...Which means we'll be facing the Lao Hu, probably Salinse's people...as well as whoever Shadow has working for him directly." He paused to let that sink in, then glanced at Balidor. "Even if we pulled in everyone from the East, our numbers won't top eighty or ninety fully trained infiltrators, would they?"

Balidor shook his head, clicking softly. "No, brother. More like seventy...eighty tops. And there is no way we could bring them over in time. Most are still in hiding not far from Beijing itself. Despite their diminished numbers as they deploy to the west, the Lao Hu still have people stationed nearby, due to their work camps...along with Chinese troops. The humans have already shown a strong interest in culling the refugee camps for new recruits. It seems clear now that they would prefer to have a near-monopoly on seers, now that the United States military is occupied with domestic concerns..."

He was watching me, though, as he spoke, his gray eyes holding more than a faint scrutiny. Glancing between me and Revik a second later, he leaned back in his chair, frowning slightly.

"I agree," he added then. "I think the two of you going to San Francisco might be an effective diversion. We can get Nenz out through the ports...then pick him up by plane out at sea. Our allies upstairs," Balidor added, indicating upwards, to mean the organic machine company that occupied most of the tenth floor. "...They have boats we could use, do they not? They also have adequate connections to get us through the quarantine protocols..."

"Won't that be noticed?" Yumi said, glancing at Revik.

He made a conceding gesture with one hand. "Possibly," he said. "It may not matter. We don't plan to swim to Argentina...and I should still beat whatever additional force they decide to send there. It's unlikely they will know who boarded the boat, unless we are extremely unlucky...and I don't plan to go by boat the whole way..."

"I'm working on a more complex series of shields," I added. "I'm showing Revik how to use them...they shouldn't be able to ID him until he's on their doorstep..."

There was another silence when I finished, then Revik tapped the table-top with his knuckles. Looking around at faces, he glanced once more at me. I knew he wasn't happy with Wreg's reaction, but I also knew he would handle it, once we broke the meeting.

"All right," I said. "I think that's enough for now. Two hours, and we meet in the conference room on the 58th floor to talk specifics. We need to go over everything that's been mocked up already, and all of the latest intel...as well as whatever Loki and Vikram have been able to come up with on the trail Feigran made out of here with his captors. Make sure Tarsi is there, too...but no one else. Not yet anyway." I glanced at Wreg, then briefly at Jon, but the latter still wasn't looking at any of us. "...Bring everything," I added. "Even ideas you may have discarded. The only chance we have of beating them is if we take them by surprise..."

When I glanced at Revik, he raised an eyebrow at me, blowing me a pulse of warmth.

Balidor was smiling at me faintly when I looked back in his direction.

I couldn't quite interpret what his look meant really, but the expression on his face managed to remind me of Vash, who would sometimes aim the same sorts of cryptic smiles in my direction when I was trying to pull off a crazy maneuver like this.

Somehow, the thought was faintly reassuring.

JON FELT THEM fighting.

He wasn't sure how he felt it, or why...but it irritated him.

He found himself paying attention to the currents of the two men's lights anyway, mostly because he couldn't block it out...and also because he could tell at least some of their argument appeared to be about him.

The reverberations hit him even a few floors down from where the actual meeting took place...and at times he felt Revik's side of the discussion as strongly if not stronger than he felt Wreg's. He didn't get a lot of details, when all was said and done, but he picked up enough that he found he was even more annoyed at the tenor of each man's light than he was that he'd been left behind in a different conference room like the family dog.

Truthfully though, the fight might have been the only reason he stayed where he was, instead of leaving and going back to his own room.

Instead he paced the small area between the long table and the door to the hall, trying to decide how long to wait before he left Wreg a nasty note and retreated to the bar...maybe to get drunk with Yumi and Jorag and some of the others, if only because it would probably piss the Chinese seer off.

As he stayed where he was instead, waiting exactly where Wreg asked him to wait, Jon asked himself again, for something like the hundredth time in the past six or so days, what the hell he was doing exactly.

Before he came up with a good answer, he felt the argument end.

Jon found his jaw hardening in the intervening minutes.

Sitting in one of the leather conference chairs, he wondered if Wreg had forgotten about him by now, even as he counted down to the probable time it would take the seer to travel from the conference room on the sixtieth floor down to the one where Jon waited on the fifty-seventh.

As it turned out, he needn't have worried...on that account, at least.

Wreg walked in without knocking, and before Jon finished counting down what he felt was an appropriate duration for the trip downstairs. Jon hadn't even had time to make up his mind yet, on how much padding to give the seer before he bailed. He'd figured something like ten minutes past what he'd deemed a conservative time limit, imagining the seer still waiting at the bank of elevators...when the door abruptly opened.

Wreg looked angry still, and not only on his face, which was closed in that infiltrator scowl. His light sparked darkly around his form, so visibly that Jon found himself reacting in spite of himself, even before he'd thought about what he intended to say exactly, or managed to wipe the scowl off his own face.

The seer's eyes met his as soon as Wreg closed the door.

"What am I doing here?" Jon said, speaking before he knew he intended to. He gestured angrily with his mutilated hand. "Are you and Revik finished deciding what to do with me? Or are you going to finish the discussion later...when the kid isn't listening, maybe?"

Wreg didn't hesitate.

He walked directly up to Jon and grabbed hold of him. He moved fast, with that eerie grace of his, catching hold of him by the arms before Jon had time to writhe away. The seer turned him around with his hands, pulling him up against his broad chest, and Jon found himself gasping, caught off guard...right before he fought him.

Wreg didn't let him go.

Worse, they'd sparred enough times by then that he knew ways around what Jon normally used to escape. Before Jon could position his weight, Wreg had his arms locked to his sides, his weight off-balance from where he'd inserted his legs between his, twisting his torso partly sideways with his larger size.

Once Wreg knew he had him, he just held him there, letting his own body go soft. He started sending light into Jon's aleimi in the same moment, grasping him tighter when Jon once more struggled to get free.

"You're angry with me, brother," the seer said, after a pause.

"Let go of me, Wreg." Jon glared back at him. "Now. I'm so totally not in the mood for this...I fucking mean it..."

"I will. I will let you go...I promise you, brother." Wreg sent more light into his skin, enough that Jon felt his chest fill with heat, in spite of himself. He was fighting to breathe when the seer sent more light into him, enough that Jon's stomach started to hurt, even as he felt himself getting hard. The combination made him so angry he could barely think. "...I want you to talk to me first," Wreg said, his voice lower that time. "And since it doesn't seem to be working the usual way, I intend to try something different..."

"Different? Yeah, this is fucking different..."

Jon fought his own reactions, still struggling where the seer held him...closing his eyes as he forced himself to concentrate, to resist what the seer was doing to his light, even as he felt it melting back into Wreg's.

Biting his tongue until he tasted blood, he glared back at the seer, forcing out words.

"Are you going to beat me up, if I don't give you the answers you want?" he snapped.

Wreg slid his free arm around Jon's other side, placing his hand deliberately on Jon's crotch.

When Jon tensed, Wreg began massaging him through his jeans, using his light even as he tightened his hold on Jon's arms and elbows.

Jon's eyes closed, longer that time, right before a sharp wave of pain left his light. He fought the heat that rose in his body, but Wreg's weight grew heavier against his, his light more invasive. When the pain worsened, Jon let out a low groan, unable to stop it, and the seer's light slammed his, just before Wreg tightened his hands, letting out a gasp.

Jon's jaw clenched when the seer massaged him harder, anger mixing with the pain until Wreg groaned against his neck.

"Fuck off," Jon snapped. "Jesus, Wreg..."

"You're angry at me," Wreg said again, his voice taut that time, almost breathless. "Why? Are you going to tell me?"

"You're serious?" Jon said. "You leave me here for a half hour...then trap me like some kind of neanderthal and start to jerk me off...and now you want to have a heart to heart?"

Wreg gripped him harder, frustration coming through the light of his hands.

Even so, his mind remained nearly unreachable as he continued to massage Jon. The seer was hard, hard enough that Jon was having trouble feeling anything else...but he could sense it was his own reactions that Wreg continued to watch, his hands bordering on cautious now.

"You're angry because I looked at your sister?" he said.

Jon felt his face harden to granite.

He looked away when Wreg tried to catch his gaze.

He felt the seer trying to decide if he should ask the question again and Jon shook his head, breaking the silence before he could.

He softened his voice and tried to open his light enough to let Wreg feel he was telling the truth, but somehow that just brought a harder, more intense flush of pain from the seer's aleimi.

"I don't like these games," Jon said. Pausing, he fought back his reaction to the change in Wreg's light, looking back at the seer before adding, "I mean it. I don't like it, Wreg...it's bullshit. If you just wanted someone to push around –– "

"I'm not interested in pushing you around, brother," Wreg said, his voice carrying a touch of warning. "I want the truth out of you, and I'm tired of hearing from you that you don't give a damn what I do. If you really don't give a damn, then tell me now...tell me so that I believe it, and I'll stop fighting with Nenz about you..."

Jon turned his head again. Studying Wreg's eyes, he gave him an openly disbelieving look once he realized he was serious.

"Don't put that shit on me. Whatever your deal is with Revik, it has nothing to do with me..."

"The hell it doesn't. I've never questioned one of his orders before."

Jon shook his head. "I never asked for a babysitter..."

"It is not
babysitting,
goddamn it. Now tell me why you were angry with me this morning..."

Jon shook his head, his jaw firm.
"You're
the one who keeps telling me I have to act like who I really am. Like a commander, not just some human who can't see anything. Yet you insist on treating me like some kind of pet..." He closed his eyes, fighting his own breath when the other massaged him more deliberately. "Goddamn it, Wreg. What do you want from me?"