He still had a hard on, even though he felt like he was going to be sick.
He found himself wondering if he should go out trolling with Terian, assuming the seer hadn’t done so already. Find himself a young human, one who looked as much like the green-eyed seer as he could manage. Maybe he needed to go a little dark for a few days, get this thing out of his system before it drove him out of his fucking mind. If he could find the right candidate, he might be able to expend the worst of his pent up aggression, especially with Terry’s help.
Terry would understand.
He didn’t want Raven along, but he could bring Terry.
In his own way, Terry could be kind of a genius with the psychological aspects of this kind of thing. He would have an opinion on how Dehgoies could best exorcize the green-eyed seer from his system. He would have ideas about how to accomplish that the most thoroughly in relation to Revik’s light, too... in addition to his body.
He’d also be more than happy to help. Hell, he’d probably love it.
Terry understood about obsession.
Terian lived for obsession, really, and actively seemed to cultivate it in himself. He was always trying to get Revik to join him on his little crusades for whatever reason, too. He’d be thrilled to come along for this ride, especially if Dehgoies decided to ease up on his self-restraint a bit more than usual. Terian had been telling Dehgoies for years that he needed to start finding the occasional slave to dominate and fuck... for real, that is, not just as a game, the way Dehgoies sometimes did with Raven. Terian insisted that Dehgoies needed only to admit to himself that it was an appetite of his and stop denying himself. He’d offered to walk him through it, even––to show him the ropes, so to speak––but Dehgoies had always declined up until now.
Terian claimed the desires would worsen with time, if he didn’t act on them. He also said they’d probably come out anyway... only even more twisted than if Dehgoies just started being honest with himself and gave himself permission to have what he wanted every now and then.
Terry’s words felt true in a way. Or more true than not, perhaps.
Even so, the idea made Dehgoies nervous.
He knew he tended to be a bit of a voyeur when Terry did it. It was an uneasy compromise, but one he’d learned to live with, and that at least blunted the worst edges of those harder thoughts he still carried with him sometimes. He didn’t even know why it made him nervous, precisely, but it did. He didn’t know the origin of those darker feelings, either.
More to the point, those desires also brought up intense feelings of self-hate.
He tried to shove that aside, too, but couldn’t quite succeed.
Thinking about it now brought back the other day, the image of that fake Viet Cong seer that he’d shot at the drop spot on the outskirts of Long Thuận. That same seer had stood back and let his seer sisters be raped and beaten with impunity, regardless of their age... and shot the males who loved them when they kicked up too much of a fuss. The thought of doing that to another of his people made him feel sicker than he felt already... sicker than he could really acknowledge, especially once it hit him that he’d been contemplating doing just that to the green-eyed seer. Even the idea of a human slave didn’t appeal to him, not in the way Terian had meant... not if Dehgoies had picked up his friend’s intentions accurately from his light.
No, he wouldn’t be doing that.
Maybe he’d just drink himself into a coma.
Give the female seer’s mate time to convince her to leave this place, before he did something he would regret for the rest of his life. If he got drunk enough, he might not have to think about it again until tomorrow... and hopefully after she had long gone.
Hell, maybe he should request some leave time from Galaith, go back to Europe for awhile, clean himself up. He might even do it, too, especially if he went alone, meaning without Raven or Terian. Maybe he needed some time to get his head together after working over in this shit hole of a war for far too long. He needed a break. He needed to go back to civilization, stop looking at whores and child seers and dead bodies for awhile.
Stop helping Galaith ship slaves from Southeast Asia to the New World.
The thought felt traitorous, almost.
Traitorous enough that he suppressed it, almost the instant it crossed his mind.
Even so, the intensity of feeling behind it shocked his light, lingering long enough to scare him, and to force him to try and think back to if he’d ever felt anything like that before. He’d thought he believed in what he’d been asked to do here. It used to make sense to him, that the Org would take over the slave trade, rather than dismantle it. It was the most logical approach. It would keep the worms feeling like they controlled the wider population of seers, while providing an easy and relatively safe route from the remaining unaffiliated seer colonies to the ranks of the Org itself.
He’d approved the approach, goddamn it.
He’d been one of the few seers Galaith had pulled in to the initial decision-making process around their overall strategy with Asia. He’d been the one to offer to oversee the initial implementation, until they had things running smoothly.
That’s why he was fucking here.
Thinking about it now, that harder feeling lodged in his throat turned into something closer to fury. He barely saw the corridor as he walked down it from the elevator, fighting to control his light as the sickness worsened, trying to turn into something else.
That fucking cunt had completely screwed with his head.
Feeling his jaw harden as he approached the door to their suite, he fumbled his key out of his pocket without bothering to ping whoever might be inside. He inserted the key into the door’s lock even as he heard someone moving in there, using his other hand to jerk the handle open as soon as he’d turned. He saw two sets of eyes look up when he entered the room, but because he was still lost in his head, it took him a moment to make sense of the expressions there.
“What?” he said, looking between Raven and Terian warily.
They weren’t sitting on the couch, or any of the crushed velvet chairs.
Instead they stood in the middle of the room, half-facing one another, as if they’d been in the middle of some kind of heated discussion. Dehgoies could almost envision them in mid-gesture before he’d shoved open the door and walked into the middle of the room. Now they both stared at him, their faces each bordering on caught-looking, although expressing that surprise in different ways. Raven’s expression turned overtly aggressive, bordering on hostile. Terian, if anything, looked relieved to see Dehgoies standing there, even as he looked over his body with a few flickering glances, and, likely his pallor, with something like alarm.
“My friend, are you all right?” Terian asked. “What is wrong?”
Before Dehgoies could think about answering, Raven cut him off.
“Where have you been?” she said, pressing her lips together as she looked him over with a less-sympathetic eye. “You’ve been gone for hours... since the middle of the fucking night.”
He gave her a hard stare. “And?”
“And... where the hell were you?”
He let out a low laugh. “Are you seriously expecting me to answer that?”
She bit her lip, as if fighting back harder words.
Dehgoies saw that more manic look in her eyes, though, along with the extreme dilation of her pupils, and glanced around the room, spotting the mirror on the main table, covered in several piles of different-colored powder. Clearly, they’d gotten into the second bag of shit Terian brought with him back from Bangkok.
Wary, when he realized how high the two of them were already, Dehgoies turned his scrutiny back on Terian. The male seer’s pupils looked roughly the same in his amber irises as Raven’s did, but he had a calmer feel to his light, along with more caution as he aimed it at Dehgoies.
“You okay, brother?” Terian asked him.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Dehgoies said. “Just how fucked u
p are you two?”
Terian smiled. “Fucked up enough.”
Dehgoies aimed his gaze back at Raven.
He could still feel something else going on, but both of them were being evasive with their light, shielding from him even as they skirted around his own aleimi, as if trying to read him without him noticing. Feeling a few more darting probes, along with a more distant flicker of intent, and what felt like manipulation, Dehgoies put his hands on his hips, staring the two of them down as he scanned them openly.
“Did something happen?” he said finally.
Raven and Terian just looked at each other. Dehgoies forgot his own caution as his headache returned with a vengeance. When they still hadn’t broken the silence a few minutes later, he bit him lip, abruptly losing his temper.
“What is wrong with the two of you?” he said. “If one of you doesn’t start talking, I’m flushing the rest of the shit down the toilet...”
Terian smiled at that, holding up a calming hand. “No, no... no need for that. Brother. We simply have a present for you...”
Raven muttered, “...You’d damned well better appreciate it, too.”
Dehgoies gave her another piercing stare, feeling his jaw start to clench. Whatever he could feel on her now, it was making his muscles tense, enough that his body slid into a near fighting stance as he stood in front of them. Or maybe he was just readying himself to get into one.
“What kind of present?” he said.
Terian clicked at him softly, still exuding calm from his light. “Galaith wants to talk to you.”
“What?” Dehgoies stared at him. “What the fuck kind of present is that?”
“That’s not the present, dugra d’aros...” Raven said, rolling her eyes and clicking in irritation. “He just called. He wanted to wait for you.”
Dehgoies felt something in his chest clench. He looked between the two of them again, then snapped his fingers in front of both of them.
“Well?” he said. “Did he wait? Or not?”
“Yes,” Raven said. “He’s on the transmitter in the other room.”
Silence fell a second time. In it, Dehgoies looked between the two of them, feeling that rage continue to heat his chest when neither of them spoke.
“Are you going to give me the goddamned line?” he said angrily.
His words seemed to jar them back into the present.
Terian laughed, making an affirmative gesture with one hand. Raven took a step away from him, folding her arms and clicking under her breath as she continued to angrily study Dehgoies’ face, along with the state of his body and clothes. Terian already appeared to be going for the transmitter though, so Dehgoies scarcely gave her a glance. The auburn-haired seer broke into a smile when he turned, however, and something about the look there made Dehgoies pause again. It was one of those smiles he’d never quite been able to read... but that usually meant Terian was either about to, or had already done, something deeply crazy.
That, or else he expected someone else to, in his immediate vicinity.
“Yes, brother,” Terian murmured, giving him a short bow. “...Of course.”
Dehgoies watched as the other male seer walked around the table covered in drugs.
Terian still had that odd smile tugging at his lips when he exited through the bedroom door, the same room where Dehgoies had woken him, what seemed like weeks ago now, but what must have been only a few days prior to this one. That had been the morning after the bombing, when Terian had those two pretty bar rats here still, from the Grand Hotel pool.
It had also been the day he’d killed that seer out in Long Thuận.
Remembering that much gave Dehgoies some semblance of a framework to mark the passage of time, even as he avoided thinking about what Galaith might want with him.
He didn’t like the timing of it, but he pushed that from his mind, too.
Terian had kept those two male humans for a few days, violating them whenever he had the urge, sometimes right in front of Dehgoies and Raven, and once in front of the hotel staff. He’d encouraged Dehgoies and Raven to take liberties with them, as well, and Dehgoies had a vague memory of watching Terian and Raven playing some kind of one-upmanship game with the two of them, after they’d all smoked way too much hash and Dehgoies himself was barely conscious.
After those few days, however, Terian had cut them loose, not bothering to erase either of them before he left them in the riverfront park. He’d given them each a few dong for tuk-tuk fare before going out to look for something new to amuse himself.
So far, nothing he’d brought back since that day had been worth letting sleep here overnight, in Terry’s eyes. A few Terian pushed out the door within a few hours, and more than one left without their clothes, including one army journalist who couldn’t have been more than eighteen, which meant he’d probably lied on his enlistment papers to get some action over here before the war ended.
Looking around the room while he waited for Terian to return, Dehgoies noticed only then that they’d managed to get the bar re-stocked, too.
It was enough to get his legs moving, and to get him out of where he’d stood, frozen, by the door to the suite. Walking over to the mirrored tray without a word, he picked up the nearest clean glass, wiping off the edge with his shirt before he plunked it down on the polished but now scratched surface. He opened the cooler, looking for ice, but barely skipped a beat when he didn’t find any, cracking open a new bottle of scotch and pouring it, neat, into the thick glass tumbler.
He didn’t trust himself to look at Raven, not then anyway, but he could feel her eyes boring into his back, as if she was studying him from a distance.
Whatever their so-called ‘present,’ Dehgoies already knew he didn’t want it.
He didn’t even want to be here. In fact, he fully intended to leave if that ‘present’ involved watching Raven and Terian torture more humans. Just thinking about it made him feel sick, especially after his morning’s interaction with that green-eyed seer.
The sick feeling in his chest worsened as he remembered the pity in her eyes, the fleeting thoughts he’d caught that included vague tastes of her perceptions of him.
She’d felt sorry for him. Seen him like a child.
Dehgoies couldn’t remember the last time another seer had looked at him in such a way... not as someone to be respected and feared, but as a youngster, a broken child, one for whom they could feel nothing but compassion and a kind of helpless pity.
Shame tried to crawl under his skin and into his light, wanting to make a home there.
Or maybe just remind him that it had never left.
Forcing his mind off of her, and off what he’d felt in her light for those fleeting moments, he stared out the wooden doors leading to the balcony. The slanted louvres of the wooden blinds tilted downward in the early afternoon sun, casting odd patterns of sun and shadow on the hardwood floor and the throw rugs on that side of the room. The rugs themselves were a mess of food and coke, spilled alcohol and burns from hiri and human cigarettes. The whole place stank, making his headache worse.
They were living like animals here, whatever they told themselves.
They weren’t acting like seers. They weren’t even acting like humans.
The door opened to the bedroom even as the thought solidified, reminding Revik how long Terian had been gone. He’d drained the first glass of scotch and refilled the glass before Terian made it across the room. Even so, Dehgoies watched the other male seer as he closed the bedroom door behind him. He didn’t miss the oddity of that, of that closed door, but he didn’t comment on it, either. Terian was holding out a black hand-held, about the size of a fist, only flat on one side, a replica of the device that woke Dehgoies up in the morning.
“He’s here,” Terian said, unnecessarily.
He handed the device to Dehgoies, even as the latter raised his new glass to his lips, taking a long drink before he put the transmitter to one ear. Turning his back on Terian without think
ing about why, Dehgoies walked in the direction of the balcony, taking another long drink before he dropped the glass on the table not far from the cracked mirror covered in drugs. He swallowed before he spoke, not looking at either of the two seers he could still feel staring at his back.
“Dehgoies,” he said, blunt.
He focused out the window at the river, feeling a jump in his light when the man on the other end of the line answered.
“My friend,” he said, concern and warmth in his voice. “How are you?”
Galaith’s voice managed to bring that shame back in a dense cloud, before Dehgoies could shield it fully from his light. He glanced at Terian and then Raven in that pause while he fought to control it... again, without really thinking about why he would look at them at all. Sighing, he combed his free hand through his sweat-damp hair, feeling his jaw harden as he tried to think through through what he could feel off the aleimi of his boss.
Concern. Compassion. Worry.
Sinking his weight down into one of the wooden chairs sitting by the half-open doors to the balcony, Dehgoies draped an arm over the round back, taking a breath before he attempted to answer, wishing he’d done a few lines before he’d taken the transmission.
He heard the wariness in his own voice when he spoke.
“I’m fine,” he said, curt. “How are you, sir?”
The pause was longer than normal.
“I am good,” Galaith said, after that stuttered breath. “Very good, my friend... thank you for asking. Things are quite well here...” Galaith paused, that concern still showing through his structured light, still audible in the sonorous tones of his voice. “I am sorry to bother you,” he said. “...Truly, I am. I hoped we could talk for a few minutes, Dehgoies.”
“We can,” Dehgoies agreed.
He set the transmitter down on the table, knowing that Terian and Raven would eavesdrop, regardless of what he did. Positioning it near enough that he wouldn’t have to raise his voice, he made the affirmative gesture with his hand unconsciously, forgetting that the other seer would not see it through the audio-only line.
Allie's War Early Years Page 21
