Revik
A Bridge & Sword Prequel
JC Andrijeski
Copyright © 2019 by JC Andrijeski
Published by White Sun Press
Cover Art & Design by Damonza.com (2018)
Ebook Edition, License Notes
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In Memory of Chris Al-Aswad (1979-2010)
Who knew, better than anyone
That there are always moments of clarity
Even in the darkest of times.
Contents
Synopsis
1. The Ghost
2. Saigon, 1974
3. Kali
4. First Meeting
5. Bomb
6. Raven
7. Memories In The Dark
8. Hangover
9. Murderer
10. Be Afraid Of Me
11. Time to Go
12. Mentor
13. A Lousy Lay
14. Sacrifice
15. What Is Your Name?
16. I’m Not Calling You Mom
17. The Defector
What to Read Next
Sample Pages
1 / Allie
2 / Mr. Monochrome
3 / Glow Eye
Also by JC Andrijeski
Series Summaries
About the Author
Synopsis
“You’ve been the bad guy so long, you don’t remember what it’s like to be good.”
The year was 1974… and she’d finally found him.
Prior to meeting Allie Taylor in San Francisco, infamous seer and infiltrator, Dehgoies Revik, lived life as a senior lieutenant of the Rooks. By 1974, he’s worked for Galaith for over thirty years, ever since the Rooks first pulled him out of a Nazi prison in Berlin in 1942.
Revik tells himself he’s helping his people, working for “the Org,” as he thinks of the Rooks’ network these days. He believes it, too, until a strange female Seer finds him in Vietnam and forces him to confront who he really is...and who he’s let himself become as a slave of the Dreng.
A prequel novel in the gritty and romantic Bridge & Sword series featuring star-crossed telekinetic lovers, Allie and Revik.
One
The Ghost
REVIK WAS TIRED of war.
War was pretty much all he knew.
Staring out over the burning thatch roofs of the small village, he wiped his face with a hand, the one not holding the modified handgun. His face, hell, his whole body felt like it wore layers of dirt and soot, not to mention sweat, which was pretty much unending here.
Taking a breath of the humid, smoke-stained air, he turned his eyes down to the man kneeling at his feet.
“Where is it?” he said, speaking Vietnamese.
The man stared up at him, wide-eyed.
He started up with the song and dance again, telling him he was wrong, that he was mistaken, that they didn’t do that trade here, that he had the wrong place, that whoever told him that was lying, that they stayed away from anything like that, that it was only rice and guns, only rice and guns, a little heroin––
Revik shot him in the head.
Turning to the human’s second in command, he took a step sideways, so that he was standing in front of him.
He raised the gun, cocking it and pointing it at that man’s face instead.
“Where is it?” he said, his voice darkly patient.
The second in command, staring down at his boss’s dead body, his mouth moving in obvious terror, just pointed, aiming his finger at a long building on the other side of the village. It was one of those they hadn’t started to burn yet.
Seeing some of his people over there now, Revik whistled.
When they didn’t hear him over the screaming of the children and women kneeling on the ground in the middle of the village, he gave up and pinged the seer working with them, using his seer’s sight.
Yes, sir?
Hold off on lighting that one. The long building. This guy says it’s there.
Revik turned back to the human at his feet.
“Underground?” he prompted.
The man barely hesitated, seeing the look in Revik’s eyes. He nodded vigorously, pointing again to the building. In trembling Vietnamese, he described an underground bunker, telling him it held what he was looking for.
“Right side,” the man said. “Inside, too.”
Revik pulled back the gun, holstering it at his hip.
He pinged Grevlin again.
Right side of the building. Looks like they’ve got an entrance inside the structure too. You might want to send someone to both. Be careful. They’ve likely got someone down there guarding the valuables… someone armed.
Grevlin met his gaze from across the packed dirt yard.
He nodded, once, seer-fashion, giving him an abbreviated salute.
Revik’s eyes shifted back to the rest of the village clearing. Glancing at Terian, who stood a few yards down along the same line of human captives, Revik motioned with his head for the other to join him.
Seeing understanding reach the seer’s eyes, Revik followed up by inclining his head towards the long, thatch-roofed building where he’d just sent Grevlin.
Grinning at him, Terian said a few words to the human mercs they’d brought with them, then walked over to where Revik stood.
Revik didn’t wait for him to get all the way there.
Turning, he began walking towards the long building.
He felt more than saw the humans watching him walk across the village clearing. He was known here, too. The longer he was here, the more he was known.
Anything? he asked Grevlin.
He’d given up on not using his sight here.
If there were any competing seer groups around here, Revik would just have to deal with them if they decided to do something stupid.
Nothing yet, Grevlin replied at once. You think he told you the truth?
Revik looked through the other seer’s eyes as he cased the outside of the building.
We’re not seeing anything, Grevlin repeated. What is it they’re storing under here?
Revik grunted, his expression unmoving.
What we came for, Revik sent back, speaking again via the other seer’s mind. It damned well better be, anyway.
Wiping his eyes, blinking in the smoke when the wind changed, he added,
Get the humans looking, too. The bunker’s light-shielded, tight as fuck, or we would have felt it by now. We’ll probably need to find it with our physical eyes.
In his mind, Revik saw the seer, Grevlin, nod once, seer-fashion.
Revik watched him turn to the humans walking the perimeter of the building with him, motioning with his fingers and talking rapidly as he instructed them to look closely for any indication of disturbed ground, anything that might indicate underground storage.
Terian and two others of their team, both of them human, remained with Revik as he approached the front of the same structure, standing outside of its sheet-covered front door. Giving Terian a bare glance, Revik did a quick scan of the insides, even though he knew the building should have been emptied already by Grevlin and his people.
Glancing over his shoulder, he noted the two humans with Terian, both of them gripping M16 assault rifles in their hands.
“Go in ahead,” Revik told them. “Just in case someone got clever.”
The sol
dier directly behind him, a mercenary originally from Austria, grunted, hefting his modified AK and walking directly to the door. His partner followed.
Terian walked up to stand next to Revik.
“You still think they’re here?” he said. “They didn’t move them?”
“I know they’re here, brother,” Revik grunted.
Terian smiled, clapping him on the shoulder. “I do so admire your confidence, Revi’.”
Revik grunted at that, too.
He was still trying to learn what he could about the building via his seer’s sight. Despite what he’d told Grevlin, he used that same sight now to look for the bunker, trying to see any indication of the presence of a shield or any other disturbance in the Barrier––meaning the psychic space where seers conducted most of their work.
They clearly had seers working for them.
He couldn’t feel a damned thing. Even with the search area narrowed to a single structure, nothing anomalous came up from any of his scans.
Someone with real training took the time to set up a construct here.
Despite how primitive this smuggling operation looked from the outside, they had real resources behind it, if someone made the effort to erect a military-grade construct to keep the merchandise safe. Even with the Org network behind him, Revik couldn’t feel a damned thing, no matter how deeply he scanned.
He couldn’t even feel a blank spot in the living light that might indicate something had been erased that should be there. Whoever they had was good enough to mimic the surrounding aleimic field with an exactness that was irritating, to say the least.
Again, all of it pointed to a military-trained infiltrator.
A military-trained infiltrator with a working sight-rank of at least a six or seven in actual, but likely higher.
Fucking race-traitor seers.
Scowling, Revik walked around the front of the building to look for Grevlin’s team while he waited for the all-clear.
He barely noticed Terian walking alongside him.
“You need to be careful, brother,” his friend murmured from beside him. “A lot of these humans recognize you.”
Revik grunted. “Yeah. So what else is new?”
Terian clicked at him in a mild rebuke.
Revik heard the amusement there, too.
He’d just locked eyes with Grevlin, who shook his head, once, when a shout came from inside the structure––then an eruption of automatic weapons’ fire.
“Goddamn it,” Revik growled.
Snatching the M-16 out of the hands of Terian, he stalked back to the opening into the long building.
“Revi’.” Terian’s voice was openly warning.
“Fuck off, Terry,” Revik growled, not bothering with a backwards glance. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t intend to be out here all goddamned day.”
Terian didn’t answer.
Revik leapt up the rickety wooden stairs, staying light on his feet. He didn’t wait, but pushed through the sheet hanging over the door’s opening, the rifle already at his shoulder.
Luckily, his seer’s eyes adjusted fast.
Seeing a form halfway visible in a hatch in the wooden floor, he didn’t hesitate, but fired, aiming for the other’s head.
The male hadn’t even managed to swing his gun around to react to the sudden flash of light at the dwelling’s main door.
Revik knew he’d hit his target even before the man fell backwards, making a loud series of bangs and heavy thunk as he fell down what was probably stairs into the bunker below.
“Anyone else in there?” Revik growled, speaking Vietnamese. “If you want to live, come the fuck out. Now. I’ll blow up this whole goddamned building if I have to. Cook you underground like a fucking hog.”
Hands appeared in the dark opening.
Seeing them, Revik did a quick scan of the room.
Both humans he’d sent in ahead of them had been shot.
One lay motionless on the wood plank floor, clearly dead, likely from a gunshot wound to the head based on the splatter pattern Revik could make out in the hazy light. The other lay sprawled on the floor next to him, gripping his thigh as he worked, one-handed, to get off his own belt, likely for a makeshift tourniquet.
“Get the fuck in here, Terry,” Revik growled, raising his voice.
He never lowered the gun off the two figures now standing at the top of the stairs in the bunker beneath the floorboards.
“Come out,” he growled, motioning with the barrel of the rifle. “Now. My patience is at fucking zero, so I wouldn’t test it.”
The younger of the two Vietnamese-looking males blanched, looking at the other.
Then, as if by a signal, both of them lurched up the last few steps, reaching the main floor of the structure.
“Anyone else down there?” Revik said, still speaking Vietnamese. “Seer?” he said, his voice more pointed. “Glow eye?” he added, switching to the vernacular.
The two men blanched again, looking at one another.
“What did I say about my fucking patience?” Revik growled, aiming the gun at the older one’s face. “Answer. Now.”
“Y-y-yes.” The man spoke in broken English, pointing down the hole. “One seer, sir. One Sark. Glow eye.”
Revik’s jaw hardened.
Then he raised his voice again.
“You heard him, brother,” he growled. “Your worm-pals here ratted you out. Come out. Now. Because you sure as fuck aren’t going to like me if I have to come in after you.”
A head poked slowly above the rim of the rectangular hole in the floor.
A girl rose slowly out of that hole, her pale orange eyes indicating her race, even though her features and long, black hair might have made her invisible in this part of the world otherwise. She looked damned young to Revik, like less than fifty years old young. She barely looked like she was out of her thirties, between her height and the roundness of her face.
Of course, some seers were short, even into full adulthood.
That could be throwing him off, causing him to view her as younger than she was.
It would be a mistake to underestimate her.
“What’s your name, sister?” Revik growled.
“Pilea, sir,” she said.
Fuck. Her voice was young, too.
He found himself scanning her light, trying to get a sense of the aleimic structure she wore. Mostly he wanted to know if she could possibly be the seer who’d designed these military-grade constructs. It seemed inconceivable, if she was as young as she appeared.
After a bare few seconds of looking at her living light with his seer’s sight, he clicked out, frowning.
“What’s your rank?” he said. “In actual?”
“Ten, sir.”
Before Revik could respond, Terian spoke from next to him, making Revik jump. He hadn’t even heard his friend come up alongside him, or felt his light. Terian was light on his feet when he wanted to be. He was also good at keeping his light deathly still.
The other Rooks jokingly called him a ninja.
“Ten in actual?” Terian said, frowning at the girl along with Revik. “Or in potential?”
The girl flushed, obviously scared.
“Potential,” she amended. “I’m sorry, brother. I didn’t mean to mislead you. I don’t know my rank in actual. I’ve been here since I was eighteen.”
“Did you make this construct?” Revik growled. “The one around that bunker?”
She reddened.
Hesitating, she glanced at the humans, then nodded, looking back at Revik.
“Y-y-yes,” she stammered. “They made me.” She pointed at the humans. “They own me, brothers. Not like the rest. I’m not shipment, like the others. I mean… I was. But I haven’t been for a long time. I belong to them.”
Revik scowled.
Glancing at Terian, he lowered the gun, taking the sights off her face.
“You have a new owner now,” Revik informed her. “At least unt
il we can figure out what to do with you.” His voice turned overtly warning. “…and I shouldn’t have to tell you this, but if you’re lying to us, if you’re freelancing, working for them willingly or a C.I.A. plant, we’ll know. Youth will only grant you so much leeway, little sister.”
Grunting, inclined his head, muttering,
“…For some of us, it hasn’t granted much leeway at all.”
The female seer swallowed, but only nodded.
Her hands remained in the air, her eyes wide.
“Well?” Terian’s voice grew a touch sharper. “You heard him. You belong to us now. Don’t just stand there with those worms… come here, ilya. Don’t give my partner here any more reason to be grouchy. He hates hot weather. He’s liable to shoot you for that reason alone.”
Revik grunted, giving his friend a sideways look.
Terian grinned back. What? Do you want me to tell her you’ve got a cocaine and rice wine hangover?
Revik clicked at him, amused in spite of himself.
Just don’t get shot, brother, he sent back. You owe me money.
He looked back at the girl, who was now walking towards them, her hands still carefully visible, her eyes fixed warily on Revik as she made her way closer.
“There’s a shipment down there? Right now?” Revik said, switching to Prexci to speak to her that time, the seer tongue. “How many?”
She paused for a second in thought. “Close to forty,” she said. “Thirty-eight. No… thirty-nine. I forgot. There’s a baby.”
“You have thirty-eight fucking seers down there?” Revik said, not hiding his disbelief.
She flinched, her eyes nervous, but measuring him now, looking him over with an obvious curiosity mixed with fear.
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