Trickster

by J. C. Andrijeski

  I frowned, glancing at the others in my pod.

  Was he drunk? Already? It wasn’t even ten in the morning.

  The others in my pod glanced around, too, but none dared speak, or even to exchange looks or facial expressions.

  All of them, me included, returned our eyes to Terian in under a second.

  Raising the bottle the rest of the way to his perfectly-formed mouth, Terian took a long drink, swallowing the reddish-brown fluid effortlessly through his now-exposed throat. He drank as if it were water, or maybe warm tea, although I highly doubted it was either.

  He really was drunk.

  He must be, to drink in front of us like this.

  Perhaps he was still drunk from the night before?

  I watched him take another long draught from the square bottle, and found myself more amused than appalled. Another shiver of separation pain sifted subtly through my light as I watched that long throat move––and more so when I noticed the male seer’s bare chest through his open jacket.

  As I stared, I found the unprofessional demeanor bothered me less and less.

  The muscles of that chest moved with the motion of the seer’s arm, well-tanned and lean, if not overly large.

  I would need to control my reactions to the other male.

  I couldn’t risk annoying him––or, worse, pissing him off, if my attentions were received as an indication of disrespect.

  Realistically, though, brother Terian must be used to evoking reactions of this kind.

  Something about the way he moved, and that light he carried…

  I searched for words in my mind, but came up mostly empty.

  Sensuality.

  There was an obvious and very particular form of sensuality there, but also something harder to define, a feeling as if the seer constantly teetered on the bare brink of losing the last vestiges of his self-control.

  That could have been from the drink, but I found myself doubting it.

  Something about that lack of control mixed with his sensuality, plus that high-voltage living light, creating a form of charged, unpredictable-feeling wantonness that I had to admit was damned sexy.

  Really damned sexy.

  The more I tried to define it, the worse my separation pain got, and the more I found myself looking at what I could see of the male’s body under his too-large clothes, and wondering vaguely if he had a lover.

  I needed to cut that shit out, and fast.

  We’d be inside the seer’s construct in less than a minute.

  No way would the top-tier seer fail to miss my stares and separation anxiety then.

  It had already occurred to me that perhaps I should take advantage of the work camp whores before I did anything else while we were here––deal with my deprivations for a few hours in the pens, assuming we got any down time prior to deployment.

  It would clear my head, at least.

  I noted that the auburn-haired seer wore military fatigues, the same uniform I’d seen on the local militia back in Manaus, as well as on the television, in my hotel room in São Paulo. I saw the stars of a general on the seer’s muscular shoulders, and a corresponding number of bars on his chest. I wondered who Terian had killed to obtain the thing.

  I supposed it didn’t matter.

  Either way, he wore the jacket open, with no shirt underneath, and the tan pants hung low on his waist, showing a good stretch of his tanned abdomen.

  Fuck. I needed to stop staring at him.

  “Apologies, sir,” Varlan told the younger Terian smoothly.

  Varlan had come to a stop, only a few yards away from the shaded opening of the building. He positioned his body in a formal stance, folding his long, pale hands at the base of his back.

  The rest of the pod stopped when Varlan did.

  We must be at the very edge of the interior Barrier construct. Varlan stopped as a form of asking permission for the pod’s entry, so it must require a passcode of some kind. That, or he was just being Old World polite.

  I couldn’t help wondering why I didn’t see any sweat on Varlan’s face, nor in his iron gray hair, even though I saw it on the face of every other seer around me––even Naragi, who often seemed oddly immune to temperature changes, whether hot or cold.

  I glanced back up at the bunker entrance.

  Terian still hadn’t answered Varlan’s words.

  Instead he continued to lean on the doorframe like a feral cat, looking around at all of us. He took his time, I noticed, gazing methodically at each of our faces and bodies, as if cataloging our details somewhere high up in those mind-bending structures of his light.

  He stared particularly hard at Karenti.

  I couldn’t help but notice and it pained me slightly, but didn’t surprise me.

  She was definitely the best-looking seer in our group, male or female.

  So yes, like many others did, human and seer, he stared at her…

  Until those amber eyes fell on me.

  Once they had, the lean-bodied seer did an actual double-take.

  On that second look, his expression changed.

  The amber eyes grew intent, concentrated… even predatory.

  He studied my face and eyes for what felt like a full minute.

  In an odd, nonlinear flash, I found myself thinking he had been looking for me among our sixteen-seer group. That same flash told me he had been searching for the source of my light before he connected that light to a specific body.

  Now that he had attached that light to my person, the feeling I got from the other male came closest to disbelief… even incredulity.

  His mouth pressed into a thin line as he leaned languidly against the doorframe, measuring me openly with his eyes.

  He didn’t hide his appraisal, but I didn’t feel so much as a whisper of the other man’s specific reactions to me.

  The combination was unnerving.

  He kept returning to my face, above everything else about me.

  Even in regards to my face, his interest in my features struck me as specific. Perhaps it was my imagination, but I saw him return to my eyes and mouth, again and again.

  As Varlan commented earlier, I am tall––even for a seer.

  Within my own pod, I am taller than all but Varlan himself.

  Varlan, being even more unusually tall than I am, still had a few inches on me, but I knew of no other seer who could claim as much, apart from one of my childhood friends back in Asia. As a result, I’m not normally physically intimidated by other seers. Even so, I could feel my light and body reacting to Terian’s stare with an almost animal-like charge of fear.

  It could have been excitement as much as fear.

  I guessed it was a bit of both.

  I was still watching that handsome face as Terian took another drink from the bottle. He didn’t avert his gaze from me as he did. His features remained stuck in that countenance of predatory curiosity.

  Do I know you? a voice asked inside my mind.

  I flinched.

  Then, in a moment of panic, I realized it had to be Terian himself.

  I adjusted my stance, keeping my light deferential.

  Respectfully, I don’t think so, sir, I sent back, after a too-long pause.

  You are quite certain we are not known to one another? It feels like I do know you. It feels like we must have met before now, brother.

  I felt my skin warm from the intimacy of the question.

  I felt the difference in my body and light, even under that tropical sun.

  I do not think so, sir, I repeated. Hesitating, I added, …again, respectfully, sir… but I do not think I would forget meeting you.

  Terian started a little at that.

  He glanced up at my eyes, which are a pale, light gray, almost blue.

  After the barest pause, a smile warmed the edges of those full lips, subtle in that high-cheekboned face. He looked over my features a final time, then winked at me before breaking into a much more expansive and genuine-looking grin.
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  He aimed that grin at the group as a whole.

  Rather than being reassuring, the dramatic change the smile wrought to the seer’s narrow face struck me as more disquieting than not, even before I felt a dense flicker of the seer’s light coiling around my own, now in unnervingly intimate ways.

  You look hungry, brother, the voice murmured in my head. Are you as hungry as you look? Or are you trying to flatter me?

  I flinched, feeling my skin abruptly heat more.

  Terian’s grin widened.

  Those amber eyes shifted away from me, that smile still teasing his perfect lips.

  “Well?” he said, addressing the group as a whole.

  His voice grew lazy, carrying a disinterested kind of friendliness, as well as that smooth thread of understated charm.

  “What are you all waiting for? A formal invitation?”

  Waving us forward, Terian receded into the darkness of the doorway, disappearing into the windowless building.

  The last thing to leave the light was his tanned hand holding the bottle’s neck.

  “…Come in out of the heat, at least,” his voice trailed behind.

  I hesitated.

  I felt the hesitation in the rest of my pod.

  I glanced at Karenti, then at Gregor, feeling as much as seeing their stares.

  I hadn’t been the only one to notice Terian’s interest in me. Shaking off that unnerving but weirdly intense interaction, I had just made up my mind to take the lead, to follow Terian into the brick building, when Varlan beat me to it.

  His long, strangely-pale hands folded at the base of his back, the middle-aged seer stepped smoothly forward, walking up the stairs of the Black Arrow command center without looking back to see if we followed.

  Taking another deep breath, I did follow, planting a boot in the dusty road with a resolve I couldn’t quite feel, not anymore.

  I had to admit, I was off-balance.

  I could still feel Terian’s light.

  I fought not to react to the darting probes exploring my aleimi, nor the ease and thoroughness with which he did, both of which were more than a little disconcerting. I could not miss the alternating flavors of predatory and proprietary in that light, nor the message that lived behind those more subtle touches.

  My belly already hurt. I could feel the confusion in my light, a near submission as he claimed me in some sense. I felt my breath shorten, my cock twitch, my muscles tense, but I could do little about those things, either.

  I felt the others notice.

  I sensed them backing off from me with their aleimi already, as if Terian had marked me in some way as no longer one of theirs.

  As I walked, I also grew conscious that all of us, meaning myself and every member of my pod, crossed a quasi-dimensional boundary as soon as we moved closer to that doorway.

  I felt the far denser and more complicated construct envelop me as soon as I’d taken more than two steps. That construct positively swam with Terian’s presence and light.

  It worked on my own light with a subtle, insidious, yet demanding intensity. The change took my breath, making my heart pound as I felt the sheer level of voltage and intention that lay behind those complex weavings of foreign light.

  I wasn’t even halfway to the door.

  Even so, I was actively fighting to retain my equilibrium, to keep my light integrity intact inside a Barrier structure that clearly intended to dominate how my light moved and operated. The sheer power behind it both impressed me and scared the shit out of me.

  As it overcame me, a thick pulse of separation pain left me.

  It came with so little shielding, I knew it must have been felt by the construct as a whole––including my pod, including Varlan, including Terian himself––a thought that got my adrenaline up, turned me on, and embarrassed me all at once, especially when I remembered Terian had teased me openly for my hunger already.

  Focusing outside of myself, I felt the construct enfold and overpower the light of every seer in my pod, including Varlan. It shredded the smaller construct Varlan had been using with us on the trip out here, ripping it apart like tissue paper under a cat’s claws

  Those probing strands of light grew more intimate in mine.

  I felt it, and I could not deny that I wanted him.

  I also could not deny that a part of my light was approaching Terian as a potential lover already. I was treating this top-tier seer as one I intended to seduce––or, more accurately, one I intended to let seduce me.

  As the realization sank in, I felt my face warm again.

  My embarrassment worsened when I noticed the other seers in my pod following my and Terian’s interactions in the Barrier, even now. I felt them notice as the separation pain in my light began to worsen, bleeding more and more into my physical body.

  I was clenching my jaw by the time I finally passed through the building’s foyer.

  By then, I was so lost and ensconced in Terian’s Barrier space, I felt dizzy.

  Varlan’s warning was scarcely a memory.

  Assuming the offer was real and not simply another test of my reactions, I would do as Terian wanted. I was a member of the Org. Above all, I was of the Org.

  I would do whatever was required of me by my superiors.

  Somewhere in the distant background of that dense, mind-warping construct, behind the light of all my pod and of Varlan himself, above the silence of those multicolored, hair-fine Barrier strands…

  I heard Terian laugh.

  Seven

  The Beach House

  Org Safe House #09281U

  Coastal property

  Malibu Beach, California

  December 24, 1954

  “Aren’t you going to swim?” Terian asked.

  He looked over at his friend when the other seer didn’t answer, frowning when he saw the distance in Dehgoies’ eyes.

  He recognized the look.

  He knew that unmovable expression as the one Dehgoies wore when he was behind the Barrier, working. The seer’s narrow, angular face aimed towards the ocean waves, but Terian doubted he saw anything of the sky, sand, or sea in front of him.

  “Are you working?” he joked.

  He shoved at his friend’s shoulder when he didn’t look over, causing Dehgoies to start, his eyes to click back into focus before he turned.

  “This is supposed to be vacation,” Terian scolded. “It is Christmas Eve. Do you have no respect for the favorite holidays of our human cousins?”

  Dehgoies grunted, shoving back at Terian’s arm.

  “You are a nag. A reverse nag. You nag me to be idle.”

  “Are you going to swim or not, Revi’?” Terian asked, motioning grandly with one hand towards the Pacific. “We are at the ocean. What is the purpose of all this disgusting sand, if you are not going to swim?”

  The taller male grunted again.

  Laying a hand on Terian’s calf, he leaned back on the dark blue blanket, exhaling in a sigh as he gazed out over the waves.

  “It is pretty,” Dehgoies conceded. “But that water is freezing fucking cold right now,” Dehgoies reminded him. “Only a fool would go in the Pacific in winter.”

  “I’ve seen you do it.”

  Undaunted, Dehgoies shrugged. “As I said. Only a fool.”

  Terian clicked at him.

  Still, his unease remained.

  He could see the distance in his friend’s eyes still.

  “Are you bothered by something?” he said after another pause. “Or merely obsessing on work, as is your wont?”

  Thinking about his own words, he felt his mood sour.

  “Is it that damned new recruit again? The one you’ve been spending every spare waking moment on for the past five or six months?” His voice grew openly annoyed. “Lilith? Lasksi? Lick-Ass? What is her name again?”

  “Liaji,” Dehgoies corrected, absently.

  “Have you fucked her yet?”

  At that, Dehgoies turned.

  Staring
at the other male for a beat, he frowned.

  “Gaos.”

  “Gaos? Is that all you say to that?”

  “Do I need to say more?” The black-haired seer frowned, staring at his eyes, his voice and light flickering around Terian, flavored with a growing incredulity. “She’s a child. I’m training her––”

  “She’s hardly a child,” Terian said, rolling his eyes as he leaned back on his palms on the blanket. “A recruit, yes. Not a child. Her tits and ass would say otherwise.”

  “She’s a child,” the other growled. “And yes, a recruit. And yes, I am training her. Even if she was two hundred years my senior, I would not seduce one of my students. Even if I was enough of a shit-stain to want such a thing, Galaith would have my balls in a vice before I so much as unbuttoned her blouse…”

  “Yes,” Terian said, clicking in annoyance. “Because Galaith spends so much of his time worrying where you put your cock, brother––”

  “Touching recruits is off-limits, brother! Are you seriously going to pretend you do not know that?” Those glass-like eyes narrowed. “Or merely impugning my integrity. And my loyalty and dedication to the Org and its goals. Again?”

  Terian frowned, clicking under his breath.

  He didn’t answer really, though.

  He didn’t look at the other male, either, but kept his eyes on the ocean waves. The sky was blue, but the air had a sharper bite of cold than he’d felt when they first came down here.

  He knew the other seer was right.

  About Galaith, at least.

  “It turns you on,” he muttered, digging his fingers into the dry sand beside the blanket. “Dominating them. Fucking with their heads. It turns you on.”

  Dehgoies exhaled, his narrow mouth curled in a frown.

  “So what?” he said, exasperated. “So every now and then, my light reacts. I’m fucking seer. A lot of things turn me on. Most of them outside my control. It doesn’t mean I really want those things. It doesn’t mean I act on them.”

  When he spoke, he sounded almost tired.

  Somehow, that tiredness bothered Terian more than the other male’s anger.

  “I see,” Terian said, lightening his words. “Perhaps you are right. Perhaps I need only to follow suit. Perhaps I should go looking for new means of amusement within the recruitment pens?”