Dragon: Bridge & Sword: The Final War (Bridge & Sword Series Book 9)

by JC Andrijeski

  Looking at only her light, I couldn’t tell for sure what she was.

  I supposed, under the circumstances, it didn’t matter.

  Covered in blood that appeared to be hers, she’d been tied down with organic bindings that wound out of the platform itself. On one edge of that platform Dragon leaned a hand holding a long, curved knife that dripped blood from the blade to his hand. Sporting a nine-inch, glass-like blade, the knife looked ceremonial, an impression strengthened by the elaborately carved green handle that might have been organic.

  The green of that handle, unlike the green of the walls and floor, made me think of jade. Carrying a softer luster than the walls, it looked old, and I realized the design on it may have been a dragon as well.

  Next to me, I felt Dalejem’s light spark erratically.

  Fear plumed off his aleimi, a disbelief that mirrored mine. I felt him recognize the being’s eyes, along with the rest of him, which made me flinch again.

  I had an absurd desire to tell him to leave––to take Feigran and just go––but for those few seconds, I couldn’t speak, or tear my eyes off the scene in front of me.

  I was still staring at the female’s terrified face when Dragon lifted his arm. He moved swiftly, liquidly. Gracefully, also like Revik did––but in a rhythm that was utterly different. Before my mind could catch up, he plunged the curved, glass knife into the middle of her chest.

  I sucked in a breath.

  My mind reeled, torn with helpless shock.

  I found myself breathing hard, watching in a stunned paralysis as he cut into her sideways then jerked the knife up and out of her ribcage. He grunted with effort as he unhooked it from where it got caught on something, probably one of her bones.

  That time, my aleimi ignited instinctively.

  I watched Dragon wipe the bloody knife off on the female’s bare leg. I watched the light drain out of her body. I stood there, watching her go, feeling even more helpless as that denser anger grew in my light.

  Next to me, Dalejem muttered a curse.

  Or maybe a prayer… I didn’t try to make it out.

  I didn’t tear my eyes off Dragon’s face, or the glitter of emotion I saw in his clear eyes. From the greenish distortion of my view of him, I knew my own eyes were glowing.

  When his irises ignited, too, my muscles tensed to marble.

  His eyes shone a darker green than Revik’s.

  Even so, I knew that light.

  I felt the trail slide up from his lower aleimic into those geometric structures. I watched them move and shift and reconfigure. More of those structures lit up as I watched, intensifying the flight or fight response in mine.

  “You need to get out of here,” I told Dalejem, without looking away from Dragon.

  “Respectfully,” Dalejem growled back. “It’s a little fucking late for that, sister…”

  Barely a handful of seconds had passed since we’d walked through that door.

  Your soldier is right, a voice said in my mind.

  It was loud. Shocking in its immediacy.

  Whatever the purpose of that organic muzzle, it reached me directly, without interference.

  It also sounded like Revik.

  Behind us, the door we’d just entered through slammed shut.

  Dalejem and I both jumped at least a foot. Only Feigran didn’t flinch. He stared at the male seer on the platform with a look of utter adulation in his eyes.

  “Brother,” he whispered softly. “Beautiful, beautiful brother. The dark behind the stars…”

  I gave him a look, maybe just to get his attention.

  Or maybe to shut him up.

  Whichever it was, it didn’t matter. I don’t think Feigran even remembered I was there.

  “Beautiful, beautiful brother…” he whispered, love in his eyes.

  I turned back towards the seer on the platform.

  I realized only then that he was looking at Feigran, too. It hit me in the next breath he was probably talking to him, given the expressions on both of their faces. I studied the slight glaze I could see in Feigran’s eyes and frowned.

  Goddamn it. I’d been led here.

  I’d been fucking led here.

  Feigran brought me here because Dragon asked him to. I’d been too stupid to see what was staring me right in the face.

  Dragon looked back at me.

  Despite the mask, I could feel him smiling.

  You would have come for me eventually, loving sister, he whispered in my head. We are one. You are a part of me. I breathe and you fly.

  That time, light followed his words, flooding into mine before I could make sense of what he’d said. His light blinded me, creating reactions too multifaceted for me to name before they disappeared or morphed into something else.

  I felt confusion, an intense profusion… voltage that drew me…

  More disconcertingly, I felt his presence in the light structures I shared only with Revik during sex.

  It was something I’d never even talked about with anyone else.

  When Revik and I were at our most intimate we would lose ourselves there, in what always looked to me like twin light tails. They twined into one another when we were together, pulling us out of our bodies, driving me out of my fucking mind––driving Revik out of his. There were nights when most of our sex involved one or both of us holding that off, since it generally made us lose control in a matter of seconds.

  No one else had ever touched that part of my light. No one.

  Dragon coiled into that part of me effortlessly, however… and pulled.

  He pulled really fucking hard.

  So hard I couldn’t get out of the way.

  I let out a choked cry as I fell abruptly to my knees.

  It hurt like hell when my knees impacted that hard floor, but I couldn’t slow my fall. Next to me, Dalejem lunged, grabbing my arm without lowering his gun.

  “Bridge!” he cried. “Bridge! Are you all right?”

  His fingers tightened on me like a vise.

  “We have to get the fuck out of here!” he shouted.

  I couldn’t answer.

  Pain flooded my light. So much separation pain, I couldn’t see.

  I felt Revik in that. Revik, Revik… it always came back to Revik, no matter how much I tried to let him go, to block him out of my light.

  Everything I’d been holding back for days, weeks now. It all came ripping out of me. I couldn’t answer Dalejem. I just knelt there, gasping, my head hanging, blinded by that longing. Grief rose in me in those blank spaces. I thought of Lily and the pain grew beyond where I could stand it, forcing out a choked cry.

  I fought to pull my light back, to bring it back into myself. It seemed to take forever. I don’t know how long it actually took. Minutes. Hours.

  I don’t know. I just know I wasn’t the one to finally end it.

  He did.

  I felt a pulse of satisfaction in that multi-colored aleimi as he withdrew.

  For what might have been a few seconds more, all I felt was relief.

  “Alyson!” Jem was still gripping my arm.

  I realized it had to be closer to seconds rather than hours, when I saw the look on his face.

  “Alyson! Allie… gods! Snap out of it! Snap out of it! I need you here!” His eyes met mine when I looked up and relief flooded my light once we’d locked gazes. I realized it was his. “Gaos… Bridge. Allie. You scared the living shit out of me! Are you all right, sister?”

  I barely heard him.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt violated like that. I could barely comprehend the emotions that came with it. I felt Dalejem’s hands on my arms and looked up, seeing the pain and empathy in his eyes right before I looked away.

  I let him help me up.

  Still avoiding looking at him, I dragged myself slowly to my feet, slamming a shield over my light. I was shaking, though, shaken.

  When I looked up, Dragon was staring between Dalejem and I.

  I
couldn’t see his mouth, but again, I would have sworn he was smiling.

  Ah! He is not only your soldier. You have a new pet, my beautiful sister?

  I gritted my teeth, fighting the pain that still coursed through my light. I gripped my stomach with an arm. I also held onto Dalejem. I didn’t let go.

  Who are you? I demanded.

  You know who I am.

  You’re not Revik, I snarled.

  Next to me, Dalejem jumped.

  Dragon didn’t. The good humor in his light only increased.

  I have been expecting you, my most Exalted Bridge. His still-glowing eyes never left mine, nor did his face change. Even so, I felt his smile. I have waited so very, very long, sister. So long. Almost as long as Death. Almost as long as him.

  I tensed.

  Death was Revik.

  I wanted to see behind that mask, so badly I felt sick with longing for it. I needed to know it wouldn’t be Revik’s face I saw there. I needed to see the differences, even if they were only from his light and facial expression.

  Dragon’s mental voice grew into a whisper.

  You’re late, he told me, softer.

  Revik said that to me once, too.

  He’d accused me of being late––of leaving him down here.

  He accused me of leaving him to be corrupted by Menlim. He accused me of leaving him to fall into the dark, to suffer decades of torture, abuse, loneliness, despair.

  Before I could recover enough to answer, Dragon’s light cracked out.

  He didn’t try to get inside me that time. He just threw me.

  The blow lifted me off my feet, slamming me into the organic wall.

  It knocked the air out of my lungs.

  I opened my mouth to gasp, pain exploding in my abdomen. Before I could take a breath I found myself crumpled at the base of that organic wall, my hands and arms splayed as I fought to drag myself back up. I moved purely in instinct, fighting to get up, back to my feet before my vision cleared, using the wall.

  I didn’t take my eyes off Dragon, but unlike before, my confusion was gone.

  My mind felt stripped, bare. Strangely clear.

  I also knew exactly what I had to do.

  I had to take this fucker down.

  Now.

  His light ignited a third time, before I’d completed the thought. My mind retained that clarity though. None of it slowed me down: my thoughts, his eyes, the words he’d thrown at me. The light that ignited in the room between us only made mine burn brighter.

  I slammed out with my own aleimi––using everything I had.

  Unlike with Revik in Dubai, there was no hesitation.

  And there sure as fuck was no holding back.

  26

  NOTHING EVER DIES

  NEXT TO ME, Dalejem sucks in a breath.

  That time, it’s aimed at me.

  That time, he’s afraid of my light.

  I catch the sound in slow-motion, in that space of no-time as light pulls in around me. Light gathers inside me, rushing like water towards those higher structures of my aleimi. The folding sensation takes over my light. It yanks me up, up, up…

  I fly into a high, white space. It blanks my physical vision.

  It envelopes me in the clearest, most perfect light imaginable.

  There, I am stillness without end. I hang there, suspended, no need for breath, for thought, for fear. My light becomes one with that light. I become one with that silence.

  I can see.

  I can see…

  Everything.

  For those brief flickers in no-time, I remember.

  I remember who I am.

  I leave the elaborate light show. The doubts, fears, confusion. The layers upon layers of illusion and posturing, angling, lying, tugging, coercing, draining, spinning, obfuscating, brainwashing, belittling.

  Just… bullshit.

  I leave all the bullshit behind.

  Up here, there are no separations.

  To use the telekinesis, I can’t afford to separate from any of it, from any living being around me. I cannot bend light an matter without being one with both.

  I know how that sounds.

  I especially know how it sounds down on Earth, outside of this space that I’m in––but that’s just more light show, more bullshit, more posturing. It’s a chorus of blind, scared, hateful little voices and their insidious worming into our brains, gaslighting us with increasingly cynical and disconnected realities.

  It’s just another way to make us shut our mouths, to pretend, to lie, to go along with the everyone pointing at the emperor’s fabulous new clothes.

  Those voices whisper…

  Sincerity is death.

  Love, real love, is weakness.

  Compassion is foolishness, is gullibility, is wrong.

  The lies are so patently false as to be puzzling, but so many believe them.

  So very, very many believe it.

  Where I am now, I can look down on that and let it all go. The serenity that comes with that clarity is like a drug. It doesn’t make me indifferent, or cold-hearted. It blows away the anger, the frustration with the endless round and round, the endless foolishness.

  It reminds me why I fight. It reminds me why the being in front of me cannot die––why nothing ever really dies, no matter how hard we try to annihilate one another, to snuff out all these projected images of self.

  He is light. Light can never really be destroyed.

  I am light, too.

  And yes, unlike with Revik in Dubai––

  This time, I don’t have to hold back.

  27

  LIKE LIGHTNING IN HIGH CLOUDS

  DALEJEM SUCKED IN a breath…

  Everything happened too fast. Too goddamned fast.

  He fought to recalibrate, to realign where his mind was, flipping into combat mode perhaps faster than he ever had––but none of it, no matter what he did, happened fast enough. He could feel things happening above his head, like lightning in high clouds, but he was too far away to really catch any of it.

  This is where he lives, his mind whispered from nowhere. He lives here, too. With her. In that far-off place. This is where he lives.

  That lightning struck––

  ––and the Bridge’s whole body was ripped away from his fingers.

  Her back slammed inelegantly into the organic wall, so fast he couldn’t turn quickly enough to follow.

  A half-step behind, he stared at her in the millisecond before she fell.

  The wall shook with the impact, buckled, rippled out as it corrected, sending a shockwave through the material all the way down the opposite side of the heavy door. The Bridge was already climbing up, clawing her way back to her feet.

  Her jaw hardened, pushing out her cheek. Her head went down, her eyes sliding into a predatory slant that didn’t look seer or human or like anything he’d ever seen before.

  Then… i'thir li’dare…

  Light just fucking tunneled down from the structures above her head.

  He gasped a second time, fighting to breathe, watching her eyes ignite in a shocking green-white light, until they appeared to shoot green-tinted flames like solar flares.

  He couldn’t tear his eyes off her face, off the clenched jaw and arms and hands.

  He watched, paralyzed, as the massive, blue-white cloud slammed down into her. It happened faster than his mind could grasp––faster than she managed to yank herself upright after that crazy monster of a seer threw her into the wall.

  It was like she twisted a valve above her head, a Barrier spigot that brought a gushing waterfall of light down on top of her.

  Until that exact second, it never once occurred to him that Alyson might have been holding back in Dubai.

  After Menlim triggered Revik, he’d seen only fear in her eyes. In the memories of the event he’d witnessed later, mainly through the eyes of other seers, he’d seen fear, panic, even despair as she screamed for him to stop. Apart from her initial shock
at what was happening, he’d never seen hesitation. He’d never recognized any restraint.

  He’d felt that initial delay in her at the very beginning, her pain when she realized Revik was gone––really gone––that whatever remained fully intended to kill her.

  Dalejem had assumed, knowing that, she wouldn’t have held back.

  In that handful of seconds before he got knocked out, he’d also been certain Revik would kill her.

  Afterwards, he assumed the only reason Revik hadn’t killed her was that crazy fuck, Feigran, getting in the way. From what Balidor told him, most of the seers witnessing the fight assumed the same thing.

  None of that surprised Dalejem at all.

  Revik fought a war as a telekinetic.

  He’d been trained in the worst way imaginable, but he’d been trained well, and for decades. He was seasoned in the field, older, a more experienced infiltrator, and better than just about anyone Dalejem had ever seen in physical and sight-skill combat.

  He would know how to leverage the telekinesis at all of those levels, in addition to new ones from having fought a war as a telekinetic in the past.

  He simply knew more––regardless of who Alyson was.

  Looking at her now, Dalejem realized he didn’t know who she was at all.

  A pain hit his light when he realized Revik probably did.

  Pale green fire danced from the rings of her irises as the thoughts ran like lightning through his mind. He sucked in a breath––then there was a whump sound, like the ignition of a flame-accelerant from a single match.

  The force behind it knocked him back, forcing him into the door. Every particle of light in the room rushed into her form.

  He found himself reminded of a demo he’d seen once, of a high-grade sonic charge.

  There was that same depth of silence…

  Then light fucking exploded out of her.

  It happened so hard and fast it whited out his vision.

  He gasped for real, flattening himself against the wall. Pressure crushed his chest, forcing air from his lungs. He could feel somewhere in the distance that he still gripped the rifle in both hands, that his feet remained planted on the floor, that his light remained more or less intact, but he couldn’t move any of it.