When she didn’t answer, he felt his jaw harden more.
“Allie,” he said, his voice still low. “He’s already got access to telekinesis. You can’t let him out of here, Allie. You can’t. It would be a fucking disaster…so if you really think you can kill him, you should do it. Now, before we leave this place…”
Finally, Allie turned.
Her head swiveled on her neck smoothly, slowly…almost like something mechanical. Dalejem felt his throat tighten when he saw the flames in her irises and the utter lack of expression on her face.
Even so, he exhaled in relief that she was looking at him.
“Allie, kill him and let’s go,” he urged. “I mean it…we have to go.”
“We cannot just go,” she said.
Her voice was flat, but held so much light he flinched.
“Why not?” he said.
“Because I’m not willing to kill him until I know more,” she said. “And we cannot lock him in here. The door will not seal.”
Ignoring the confused look Dalejem gave to the door, she went on in a calm voice.
“However, I agree that we cannot risk him getting out,” she said next. “Given the limitations I just outlined, what do you suggest, brother?”
That time, her voice was almost polite.
Dalejem scarcely hesitated.
“If you really can’t lock him in here, then you have to kill him, Allie,” he said. “We can’t risk that he’s been corrupted by the Dreng. Anyway, he’ll probably kill us if you don’t––”
“Is he evil?” she broke in. “In the myths? Dragon,” she clarified.
Hesitating, Dalejem shook his head.
“No,” he said, reluctant. “No…not evil. Just incredibly fucking powerful. He’s sometimes portrayed as ‘the righter of wrongs.’ Some seer scholars believe he’s the same being that ancient humans used to worship as the Old God…thousands of years ago, I mean. The one who brought floods and fire and famine and brimstone and whatever else to smite the unrighteous. Some call him the ‘Old God’ even in the older versions of the Myth…” He paused, seeing a light go off in Allie’s eyes. “What? That means something to you?”
Again, relief filled his voice that she even seemed to be hearing him.
As he thought it, her gaze shifted inward once more, as if she’d retreated back into some other space. Tilting her head, she gazed back up at the seer she held against the wall.
“The Old God…” she muttered.
Dalejem was about to try with her again but light snaked out of her aleimi in another thick, blue-green cord. Even as Dalejem saw it, it wrapped itself tightly around the huge seer, making seven or eight full loops before tightening like a vise.
Dalejem flinched as that vise squeezed, causing the larger seer to kick and squirm in the air, his complexion turning a darker red.
That time, Allie spoke directly to Dragon.
Is what he’s saying true, brother? she sent. Are you here to kill us? Floods and fire?
Dalejem heard the mocking note. Even so, he felt the question as real.
The being calling himself Dragon didn’t answer.
“Allie…” Dalejem muttered. His nerves vibrated higher in his light.
Why are you here? she pressed, still staring up at that muzzled face. Or are you simply one more intermediary who has lost his way, my poor brother…yet another tiresome monkey dancing and clapping its cymbals for the Dreng?
She paused, waiting for him to answer.
When he didn’t, her thoughts grew more angry.
My husband was made to recite prayers as a child, she sent. Prayers the Dreng taught him. Prayers about the Old God. Prayers that told of His return, of what He would do. She paused, and her thoughts grew more biting. Do you know anything about that, my brother? Or are you simply flattered with the attention?
Dalejem stared at her as she finished. She didn’t return his gaze.
Her eyes remained narrowed up on the being, Dragon.
Dragon just hung there now, breathing heavily.
Even so, Dalejem found himself fighting that pressure in his chest. He looked around, noting lightning-like streaks as they coiled across the ceiling of the circular room.
“Allie…” he muttered, his voice containing a warning. “Allie, for fuck’s sake…”
What is to keep me from killing you? she asked Dragon. Why should I spare you?
I told you why, the being answered, still breathing hard. Or does that not matter to you anymore? Have you moved on so quickly, my beautiful sister?
Dragon’s eyes shifted to Dalejem, staring at his face.
Dalejem looked at Allie, frowning.
Clearly he’d missed something in the earlier part of their conversation.
She didn’t return his glance that time either, but Dalejem saw her throat move in a swallow, even as a pulse of emotion left her light…one that felt real.
“Allie?” he said, soft. “What’s he talking about?”
Again, she didn’t look over. She directed her words to Dragon.
Menlim won’t kill my husband, she said, her thoughts cold. Not even for you, my most impressive brother.
He will kill him if he can’t control him, Dragon told her at once. In through the out door, my precious sister…in through the out door. I am that door…and when that door closes, not even your friend Feigran can save him…
Dalejem felt Allie’s aleimi spark in reaction.
More than that, he felt a denser, more intense charge spin chaotically in her light, what might have been fear. Dalejem tried to follow the currents he felt and saw, but they moved and shifted too quickly…there were too many of them. Even as he thought it, she looked at Feigran, her glowing emerald eyes asking the auburn-haired seer a silent question.
“In through the out door?” Dalejem said. “What the fuck does that mean?” He followed her gaze to Feigran’s face. “Allie? What does that mean?”
Feigran give her a perceptible nod.
Anger flared in her light.
Powerlessness…what might even have been grief.
For a long moment, she seemed to lose control of the emotions that flickered through her aleimi, again too rapidly for Dalejem to follow. He still didn’t understand, but he fought pain in his own light as he reacted to hers, resonating with the depth of feeling there. He fought to pull away, to control himself, but never really succeeded in either.
Finally, she looked at Dalejem, murder in her eyes.
“We can’t kill him,” she said, blunt, in English.
“What?” Dalejem said. Panic immediately took over his own light. “Endruk et dugra…why? What is this nonsense about doors?”
She shook her head. “We have to let him go. We have to.”
“Let him go?” Dalejem exploded. “No! Fuck no! Are you insane?”
She shook her head again. The anger in her light worsened.
“Do you have any idea how dangerous that would be?” Dalejem said. “To let any kind of telekinetic out, much less this one…given how iksrataa crazy he obviously is…?”
She met his gaze. He saw that furious helplessness in her eyes still, even through the sparking and shifting liquid flames.
From her expression, it was clear she did know.
She knew better than he did.
He was still staring at her when she shook her head.
“It’s too late.” She looked at him, her gaze flat. “…I’m sorry, Jem.”
“That’s fucking madness!” he exploded.
She didn’t look at him.
“Nonetheless, it is true,” she said, her voice unchanging.
As she finished uttering the words, the cord holding Dragon snapped back.
Whatever had been holding the giant seer suspended over the floor abruptly let him go.
He fell…hard, fast…but Dalejem saw him catch himself somehow before he hit the floor. In the end he landed almost softly…cat-like, on his feet.
He crouched there, his
eyes fixed on Allie.
Even through that mask, Dalejem could have sworn he saw him smile.
15
HEADS OF STATE
“Where is she?” Brooks muttered.
Her eyes scanned the mostly-flat, grass-covered land leading up to the base of the Rockies. Trees broke that plain, here and there. Old trees mostly, ones that looked like they’d been there for a long time. The closer to the mountains her eyes got, the more foothills also pushed out of that flat land, causing gentle ripples covered in yellowing grasses.
She blew stray strands of her curly hair out of her face, fighting impatience.
It was cold out here. Despite the jacket she wore and the hood covering most of her head, she felt exposed. On the other hand, she hadn’t been aboveground in weeks, so she also felt strangely liberated, having escaped all but the bare bones of the Secret Service and every one of the now overly-familiar faces of those who made up her administration.
She knew she should probably be feeling a lot more than impatient.
She should probably be scared out of her damned mind.
She definitely should be wondering how she’d let herself get talked into this…a secret, low-security meeting with a known terrorist…a terrorist long-rumored to be married to one of the most historically infamous mass murderers of all time.
Even now, only one other human stood beside her out here.
By comparison, twelve seers stood around her in a protective circle. The fact that the majority of those seers supposedly worked for her didn’t really do much to assuage Brooks’ anxiety…although she didn’t feel actively in danger, either.
Then again, how would she even know?
Brooks had nothing against seers personally. She’d even befriended a few of them on her security team…and as a senator she’d fought for a relaxing of some of the harshest of the SCARB codes in D.C., an uphill battle even before Wellington was assassinated by seer terrorists. So yeah, she wasn’t anti-seer.
On the other hand, Brooks was a realist.
A lot of seers hated humans…with good reason.
Brooks knew all seers weren’t terrorists, though. Some weren’t even particularly hostile to human beings, despite the sordid history between the two races. The power imbalance there worried her, though…because again, she was a realist. Meaning, she couldn’t avoid the thought that they might have manipulated her mind to get her to come out here.
It might explain her lack of fear, too.
Brooks had known one of the seers who came to her underground quarters that day.
Talei used to be on Brooks’ Secret Service team in D.C.
Brooks remembered her well; moreover, she’d always liked her. She’d trusted her too, as much as she could trust anyone who was essentially owned by the United States Government.
Still, Brooks been shocked when Talei entered her room, saluted, then as soon as the door closed, proceeded to use an illegal headset to disable all of the room’s internal security measures. Once she had, she’d approached Brooks and began talking to her rapidly in English, after barely so much as a how do you do?
She’d told Brooks that her presence wasn’t authorized to be inside the NORAD complex at all, that she’d snuck in with a small group of seers to offer peace terms and a potential alliance…an alliance with none other than Alyson Taylor, one of the most notorious seers alive.
Alyson Taylor, who also happened to be the seer many people blamed for the C2-77 epidemic.
As Brooks listened to Talei speak, she found herself wondering, however.
For one thing, Talei’s words in a roundabout way lent support to several suspicions Brooks herself had been harboring for some time now. Suspicions around the integrity of her own administration. Suspicions around the logistics of infrastructure failures at key points in the United States and elsewhere at the beginning of the crisis. Suspicions around the official stories about how the disease got rolled out in so many places across the globe…and of course, suspicions about the blackout cities and their seeming “preparedness.”
Essentially suspicions Brooks had, pretty much from the start, about how realistic it was that a handful of disgruntled, terrorist seers could have done all of this on their own, without major backing from key segments of the human world.
Talei told her she couldn’t trust what she’d heard about China.
She also told Brooks that Alyson Taylor’s people had been trying to feed her accurate intel for months, but that those channels were increasingly being intercepted and shut down.
Remembering the reports she’d been getting and how they seemed to come from all over the place, Brooks found herself listening a lot harder after that.
Talei told Brooks bluntly that spies lived underground at the NORAD complex with her, spies who belonged to the same group that orchestrated the plague of C2-77 and the global lockdowns. She told Brooks that those same blackout cities were now taking over entire continents, including large segments of North America, Asia and Europe, as well as the Middle East, Africa and South America, primarily using seers to control the political situation, but also using humans for labor and capital accumulation.
According to Talei, the conspiracy involved humans and seers working together from the beginning, although she admitted the conspiracy’s main architect was likely a seer. This dark seer, who Talei called “Shadow,” had been allying with humans in various ways all the way back to World War I. He’d also allied with Syrimne, at least until Syrimne decided to ally with the Bridge instead.
Some of this was a little beyond Brooks to grasp, in terms of the details.
Yet she found she didn’t disbelieve it, per se.
Some was a lot easier to comprehend.
Like Talei telling Brooks that the spies among Brooks’ own people were likely already working against her. And Talei telling her that they likely intended to kill Brooks once her immediate usefulness expired. Brooks had long suspected that there was a clear list of “allies” and “enemies” around those lock-down cities and the elite who managed to procure a coveted spot inside their protective walls. She’d also suspected that if you weren’t on the ally list, you would eventually end up on the other one.
Talei’s words supported that suspicion, too.
Those same spies, if Brooks understood Talei correctly, wanted her to threaten China with nuclear war in order to obtain some concession from the Chinese seers, the Lao Hu. Talei seemed to think a coup might be attempted there soon, either from outside or from within, but she had less information on that.
The thought was chilling…yet it resonated with a lot of what Brooks had been seeing.
As a result––and even though she knew there was some chance that highly-trained seers had implanted these beliefs in her brain––Brooks found herself agreeing to meet with Taylor informally.
Talei promised her that her mind would not be touched.
Of course, they would have said that anyway, Brooks knew.
“Where is she?” she muttered again, raising a hand to shield her eyes from the afternoon sun.
Turning, she looked at the red-eyed seer standing directly behind her, an East Indian-looking female who Talei had brought out here with her. Her skin was dark enough that Brooks might have been psychologically fooled into feeling some kinship with her in that more gut-level way, particularly given her hairstyle…but those eerie red eyes marked the differences between them with exclamation points and several underlines.
That same female seer looked somewhat familiar to Brooks too, although she couldn’t place from where exactly. Possibly one of the mixed-race SCARB teams out of D.C., since Talei introduced her as ex-SCARB, too.
Whoever she was, she seemed to be the one actually in charge. Tall and muscular with black hair done in tiny braids that hung down her back, she had those striking red-ember eyes, high cheekbones and a strangely perfect mouth.
She also wore at least six guns that Brooks could see.
“I’ll be missed,” B
rooks reminded her, glancing at the other two female seers standing next to her, both of whom wore that same warrior-like demeanor. Brooks noted the guns on them too, as well as the armored clothing they wore, fighting the intimidated feeling that wanted to crawl over her chest.
“…If you are truly worried about spies within my administration, this isn’t the most inconspicuous thing we could be doing right now,” she added.
The red-eyed seer nodded, unfolding her muscular arms and planting her feet.
Turning her head towards Talei, who stood next to her but at least four inches shorter, she began gesturing fluidly with her hands, grunting something in that seer language as she did. After Talei responded in the same language, the one with the braids looked back at Brooks.
“She is on her way,” she said in accented English. Tapping her headset with one long finger, she made a strangely polite-looking inclination of her head. “She has contacted us, beloved cousin. She was held up…but she is now coming. She asks us to apologize on her behalf for being late.”
Brooks nodded, smiling stiffly.
She appreciated the seer’s efforts to put her at ease.
Still, she couldn’t remember ever seeing a seer who looked so, well…seer before.
Those red eyes coupled with the way she moved gave her an air of foreignness that seethed off her very skin. Standing over six feet tall with those muscular bare arms and shoulders, she was frankly terrifying. Brooks strongly suspected that went far beyond the six guns she wore and the bare bones of her physicality, both of which were intimidating enough.
It hadn’t occurred to Brooks in a long time that most seers she got exposed to had been chosen and trained specifically to mimic humans. Not just in terms of wearing contact lenses and being picked for their height or their facial features or their ability to blend into a human crowd…those deemed able to “pass” were also taught to mimic human mannerisms, gestures, walking style, clothing, language, even facial expressions.
Dragon: Allie's War Book Nine Page 30
