But he couldn’t think about that right then, either.
Wincing away from the memory, he cleared his throat.
He adjusted his seat on the leather chair right as Menlim spoke, breaking the silence.
“All right, brother,” Menlim said. “I confess, you have piqued my interest.”
He let that hang briefly, then slowly rose to his feet.
The other seers on the tiger-skin couch rose on either side of him, pulling their clothes and weapons straight as they regained their feet.
Revik remained seated.
Menlim stared down at him, a harder look touching his mouth. “I will give you tonight to rest. Tomorrow we will begin the assessments I require before we begin negotiations for real. Is that objectionable to you, brother?”
Revik made a negative gesture with one hand. “No.”
“Good,” Menlim said.
Exhaling a bit, he frowned again, still studying Revik’s face and body. Then he shook his head, as if shaking off a stray thought. He motioned for the others to head for the door. He stood there as they began to comply, again studying Revik’s face.
“Use the wall monitor if you require anything, brother,” he said. “The kitchen is available twenty-four hours…” Pausing, he added with more bite, “We also have a fine array of unwillings on staff, brother…seer and human. I imagine that, now that you are single once more, you will be availing yourself of their services, too…assuming we can work out the details of your employment to our mutual satisfactions?”
Revik felt his jaw harden.
He didn’t answer.
He did catch Ute staring at him after Menlim said it, though.
Studiously avoiding looking at any of them now, Revik simply sat in the leather chair, his hands clasped in front of him. He didn’t change posture as they filed out of the apartment in silence. Nor did he move his eyes from the carpet.
He still hadn’t moved minutes later, after the door had closed firmly behind them.
11
VOICE
I am awake now… the voice whispered.
Now that I am awake, I cannot sleep…
I cannot.
You must come to me.
Come to me sister, for I cannot do the rest alone…
Cold wind hit me in a sharp blast as I walked alone down the lowering metal ramp. Focusing out over the empty tarmac spread in front of me, I looked for signs of life. The entire airstrip appeared to be deserted, even compared to what I’d seen on the satellite images and surveillance on the way here. I didn’t even see any birds.
The ramp hadn’t fully extended by the time I reached the end.
I didn’t wait, but released the safety bar and jumped the rest of the way down, my eyes still on the horizon. I landed on my boots, feeling it up to my knees.
I’d been sitting way too long.
It was more than that though, and I knew it.
Looking around at the mountains surrounding the small, private air strip, I felt a weird blip somewhere in my lower belly. Somehow this felt more like coming home than that op Revik and I did together in San Francisco…or even my last time in New York.
Maybe I’d just been away longer this time.
Or maybe enough of the chaos had cleared from the surface of the land that I could feel the land itself again. Either way, it hurt a little bit, looking at those familiar, snow-covered mountains. Aunt Carol lived out here for a few years while I was growing up, so I actually knew this part of the country a little.
Like in Asia, no planes broke the silence. Well, apart from the whirring and powering down of the ancient propeller engines of the cargo plane I’d just exited.
I didn’t hear any cars, or so much as a car radio.
Granted, we were pretty far out of the city.
We’d landed in a private airstrip just north of the town of Fort Collins, coming in via an even smaller town a few hundred miles west of Quebec City. We’d needed to stick to the outskirts of any even semi-organized human settlements in both cases, but especially here, being so close to the NORAD-monitored airspace.
I just hoped we’d gotten an accurate map of the sensors they had monitoring ground and air traffic. Even eighty miles north of Denver felt dangerously close.
Of course, if they still had access to satellite feeds, they’d know we were here already.
Another gust of wind whipped my hair and face, cutting through my clothes. That shock of cold air surprised me too, even as it hit me that I hadn’t been anywhere but tropical climates for the past ten months. And yeah, it was February in the Rocky Mountains, so of course it would be cold…but somehow that possibility never occurred to me. I think our coldest day in Thailand was around eighty-nine degrees Fahrenheit.
Four weeks. Nearly four weeks had passed since the morning I woke up in Bangkok with a note tied to my arm.
I forced that out of my light, as well.
It was early here yet, maybe seven in the morning, so I knew the temperature would rise some as the day wore on. But it wouldn’t get warm. We’d need jackets during the day and likely thermals at night, especially since our sensors showed they didn’t have power many places out here.
Glancing back over my shoulder when the metal ramp thunked onto the tarmac, I saw Jorag’s blue eyes right as his face broke into a smile. We’d met up with him and Chandre just outside of Mumbai, doubling the numbers of each of our smaller groups.
Before I could say anything, he tossed something at me.
I caught it, more in surprise than anything, and nearly lost my balance.
“Bridge’s too good to carry her own clothes,” Jorag snorted, glancing over his shoulder at Neela, who walked behind him. “She’ll be wanting us to wash her underwear next…”
Neela rolled her eyes in exaggerated seer fashion, clicking at him.
“Like you wouldn’t totally get off on that,” she said. She winked at me. “Dugra t’ pervert…” Passing by him with her own satchel, she smacked him sharply on the shoulder with the flat of her hand. “Bridge’s not lazy. Just the boss. We only brought you as a pack animal anyway, Joro…you’re not good for much else.”
I fought to smile.
“The Bridge is just paranoid,” I told them. “…And okay, a little lazy, but mostly paranoid.” My eyes shifted back to the empty expanse of tarmac, focusing on the small control tower in the distance. “I wanted to make sure we hadn’t missed any…company…I guess.” Shrugging, I added, glancing back at them, “Anyway, I figure telekinetics out first, right?”
Jorag snorted.
Before he could reply, Surli spoke up from behind him.
“Likely story,” he said.
When I turned, he gave me a faint smile, too.
I saw more scrutiny in his calico-colored eyes, however. I also noticed he wore his rifle out. Meaning where he could actually use it, unlike Jorag…and despite the heavy weapons bag Surli carried over his own shoulder.
“…But it’s reassuring to know you can think on your feet,” Surli added.
I shook my head, clicking in mock irritation, but my eyes returned to the horizon as I did. I couldn’t feel anything. Nothing bad anyway.
Not anything good really either, though.
I looked back towards the plane’s rear ramp right around the time Dalejem appeared. He had the most important piece of cargo with him, I noticed. Collared, shivering already despite wearing at least four layers of shirts, all of them a few sizes too big, Feigran crouched next to the big-shouldered seer, looking like he expected to be hit any second.
Watching Feigran look from Dalejem to the other seers in our group, I frowned.
Balidor had an absolute fit when I told him I was bringing Feigran with me, of course.
Which…yeah. Duh. I expected that.
I got lectures. Well, if you could call them that. I basically had to listen to four or five seers yelling at me, more or less at the same time, for six or seven hours. The only one who hadn’t weighed-in was Tar
si. She just looked at me in that way of hers, as if reading something on my light I couldn’t even see myself.
The tank wasn’t practical to bring with us, of course.
Which again, duh. But when I told them I’d make do with high-grade sight restraint collars and one of our mobile construct cages, Balidor, Wreg, Jon, Poresh, Yumi…and even Vikram…upped their arguments from strident-bordering-on-condescending to full blown alarmist-verging-on-hysterical. Reminding them that the tank didn’t hold Feigran’s aleimi much better than a sight-restraint collar did anyway, didn’t really help my case.
In the end I had to do what I always did when my “advisory team” didn’t agree with one of my strongly-felt decisions. I basically had to ignore all of them.
I knew they all thought I’d lost my mind by then anyway.
“Are we up then, Bridge?” another voice asked, female that time.
I glanced over, meeting Talei’s gaze.
Chandre hadn’t been thrilled I’d brought her, either.
But I wanted her here. This wasn’t a military op in the strictest sense…not yet, at least. For now it remained purely an infiltration job and, potentially anyway, an attempt at diplomatic negotiation. Talei had intel and connections I could use for both of those things. She’d been affiliated with the Washington D.C. branch of SCARB for years. She’d also worked for the Secret Service, including in oversight of the White House construct.
She assured me she knew the NORAD installation, too. She’d spent time here recently enough that we even had some prayer she might be able to guide us through the security protocols.
Anyway, it was standard practice to bring someone from the infiltration arm on every military endeavor. That was true even for splinter squads like the one I’ll thrown together.
I’d chosen her.
“Yes,” I told her, using sign language for the rest. Are you sure you only need three with you? We could spare up to five.
Talei gestured a negative with one hand.
“No,” she said aloud. “Smaller is better. We’re not going to get in the door with guns, sister…respectfully, we likely couldn’t even with your telekinesis. It shouldn’t be our Plan A, for damned sure. Or even our Plan F.”
I nodded, agreeing with her.
I knew it rubbed Jorag and a few of the others the wrong way, how informal Talei was with me. I think it bothered them mostly because I didn’t have any kind of relationship with her. They never got pissed off when Jon or Balidor or Wreg talked to me like that, or even yelled at me, but maybe they figured they’d earned it.
Personally I didn’t much care how Talei talked to me as long as she did her fucking job.
Right then, I kind of appreciated the bluntness, honestly.
“Okay,” I said. “Great. And yes…go. Contact us when you get an answer.”
She didn’t bother to salute, but instead only gestured an acknowledgment. Right after she did, she glanced back over her shoulder at Chandre and scowled. I definitely got the sense the scowl was in reference to something specific that had passed between the two of them just then, but I didn’t try to probe that any deeper.
None of my fucking business, as Revik would have said.
Thinking about him made me wince, though.
I focused back on Talei as she and Deklan and Mara loaded up on weapons.
Truthfully, the only thing that really bothered me about Talei was that she looked so much like Cass. The resemblance had been remarked on before, of course, and not only by me, but it still unnerved me whenever I caught her face at certain angles.
Mara, on the other hand, I hadn’t really wanted…not after the bonding thing.
I’d put her on the list as a possible prior to that night, mainly because both Balidor and Yumi recommended her for ground ops. Revik and I talked about the possibility of leading up our own teams to look for Network seers, even before Dubai, so I’d been kicking around names for awhile. I considered dropping her after I’d seen her reactions to Revik that night…then decided I was being stupid and kept her on the list.
Now I was kind of wishing I hadn’t, even though Dalejem vouched for her military ability, too.
I didn’t want to know for sure if she’d ever slept with Revik. I really didn’t. So I hadn’t asked him the question that night when I saw her looking at him. I hadn’t asked anyone else, either…but I strongly suspected she had.
I didn’t need it confirmed, especially now. Having her here meant the question lurked in the back of my mind, though, fucking with me when I let it.
Even as I thought it, Talei whistled, aiming the sharp sound inside the cargo plane.
“Kat!” she snapped. “Move your ass! We’re going!”
I felt my jaw clench.
I was still looking that way when the one person I wanted here even less than I wanted Mara walked out of the darkness of the ship’s hold. Blowing her blond bangs out of her eyes, the Russian seer swayed her hips even in armored combat pants. Her light brown eyes focused on me, I noticed, even as a smirk played at the edges of her mouth.
Before I got to Mumbai, I’d forgotten Revik assigned Kat to Chandre’s team, too.
Ironically, he’d done it to get her away from me.
Shoving that out of my mind, I looked away from Kat deliberately, fighting not to react to her stare intensifying on my back. Glancing over the group of seers who would be staying with me in Fort Collins, I fought to smile, to normalize my expression at least.
I saw Dalejem watching me, his green and violet eyes narrow.
Ignoring the scrutiny there, I made a polite motion with one hand.
“Brothers and sisters?” I said. “Shall we procure accommodation?”
Jorag snorted a laugh.
Neela, Jax and Illeg grinned at me, too.
Dalejem smiled, but that tauter scrutiny never left his eyes.
“I am awake…” he muttered. “Awake now…”
I looked over sharply. “What?”
Feigran looked up at me, his amber eyes shining in the dull sheen of candlelight.
We’d been at this for hours. Days, really.
Not all the time. But most of it. I’d actually dozed off in here once. I woke up on the queen-sized bed, Feigran wrapped around my side, his arm around my waist. It had been unnerving, yeah. But weirdly touching too, if only because he’d opened his light the way Lily did when she slept, which made it pretty hard to see him as much of a threat.
I knew the other infiltrators wouldn’t have agreed.
I’d sent them to Denver and the surrounding areas for each of those days, though, so none of them knew. I tasked them with looking for Listers, for any allies they might be able to find in the area while we waited for Talei and the others to get back.
No one asked me why I didn’t go with them…or what I’d be doing during that time.
I suspected at least a few of them knew.
Well, I suspected one of them did. I’d seen Dalejem glaring at me more than once as he left with the rest of them, an M16 rifle slung over his arm.
I am awake now… the voice whispered.
Awake…
Rubbing my face to pull my mind back to the room, I refocused on Feigran, frowning. “Who is awake?” I asked him. “Whose voice is that, Feigran?”
“In through the out door…” he muttered.
“That’s who’s awake?” I said, sharper. “Dragon?”
“No, no…” Feigran looked up at me, his words trailing off, his expression hesitant. For a few seconds, he appeared almost confused. “Well, yes,” he amended then, almost like Revik would have done, making me wince.“…Yes and no. Dragon is awake,” he explained. “In through the out door…that is what woke him.”
Looking off to the distance, Feigran nodded, matter-of-fact.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, that is correct.”
Glancing up at me, he nodded again, as if satisfied with his own answer.
Then he looked back at the sketch he’d been work
ing on, which lay directly in front of where he sat cross-legged on the floor. He studied it for a few seconds, then looked up at me, his amber eyes strangely clear.
“He was asleep, sister,” he explained. “So many years. He slept and slept…but he is awake now. He is awake…in through the out door. It woke him.”
“You mean what happened to Revik? In Dubai?”
But that only seemed to confuse him. Clicking under his breath, Feigran switched to humming a handful of seconds later. Then he was drawing happily with the charcoal pencil, as if I hadn’t asked him anything at all.
I knew that usually meant he didn’t understand my question.
Looking at him, I frowned, fighting to make sense of his words.
In my mind, that voice whispered again.
Come find me, sister.
Come find me…please…
Let him show you the way.
I bit my lip, watching Feigran draw.
I knew Feigran himself might be sending me those words, the images that surrounded me in my dreams, almost nightly since I left the construct we’d erected around that apartment building in Bangkok. I knew if Balidor were here, he’d want Feigran locked up; he’d tell me that he was manipulating me, that the seer was dangerous, that he had structures in his light that none of them could map, that none of the other infiltrators even understood.
I knew he was right.
I knew all of that. I did…and I knew Feigran might really be doing all of those things Balidor would tell me he was doing. Feigran wouldn’t even need a reason to do them…or a reason not to for that matter. He definitely wouldn’t need a reason that made sense to anyone else. He might screw with my head just because he couldn’t help himself.
I didn’t really believe it though.
I tried to convince myself that I was entertaining that possibility, that I was remaining skeptical…objective…but I didn’t really believe it.
I’d known this was why I was coming here, at least in some part of my light.
I’d known, but I told myself it was about Novak.
I told myself it was about that damned book.
That it was about Brooks…about preventing a war.
Dragon: Allie's War Book Nine Page 22
