Revik’s light retracted.
It happened fast. Fast enough to catch my breath, to force a moan from my lips.
That sparking, high-intensity flame evaporated from my skin and aleimi like a fire that’s been snuffed out from lack of air.
Still gasping, I turned my head, looking over my own shoulder. I blinked through the blood that ran freely down my face, blinding me from most of the room.
I could see a few things, despite the sparking glow that remained in my eyes. I could see a few, key details even through the blood that coursed down my face and neck.
Terian stood there, grinning.
I stared at him for a long-feeling few seconds, confused at the smile on his face, the dancing light in his amber-colored eyes, the way he danced on his heels like an overexcited kid.
Then I saw the metal pipe he held. He gripped it in both hands, kind of like it was a baseball bat, and he was getting ready to hit a ball out of the park.
Or maybe like he already had.
Even as I thought it, I looked at the end of the pipe, and realized that dark color I saw there was blood.
My eyes shifted down, seeing Revik’s body crumpled at Terian’s feet. Staring between the two of them for a few seconds more, I struggled to make sense of the whole picture, feeling adrenaline continue to spark and stutter through my blood as my aleimi sparked like a downed electrical cable around my body.
Everything in me was telling me I was in danger still, that I was about to die.
But I couldn’t move. I could only stare at Terian and Revik, fighting to piece it together, to get it all to make sense. I was still trying to decide what I was seeing, when a shot echoed through the hollow space of the warehouse behind me, causing me to flatten my body and head back against the cement floor.
I had no idea who was shooting.
As far as my mind could tell me... it didn’t really matter at that point.
I was pretty sure whoever it was, they were probably shooting at me.
CHANDRE WAITED FOR Menlim to leave the opening between the crates.
She did not raise her head, not even when the sound from by the cages grew loud enough that she flinched. Hearing another slamming noise, like something heavy being slammed into something even heavier, she fought not to let her imagination fill in those blanks. Even so, her mind imagined bodies being thrown into walls, possibly having all of their bones broken as they collided with less-yielding objects and materials.
Forcing the morbidity of such thoughts from her mind, Chandre gripped the gun tighter. Holding her breath, she scanned the dark with the infrared, keeping the scope on the area where the Dreng infiltrators all appeared to be exiting the wall of crates.
A louder crash came from the area to her right. Chandre nearly raised her head to look, when suddenly, a cloth-covered head appeared in the open floor right past the crates.
He stopped there again, with only half of his head showing. Chandre found herself swearing soundlessly in Prexci under her breath when he didn’t move.
“Come on, you endruk et dugra upara d’ kitre...” she muttered.
Just then, a hollow thunk sound came from the area of the cages.
It was softer than anything she’d heard from there in the last few minutes, but weirdly loud in the quiet that preceded it. Chandre almost turned her head a second time, but movement in front of her brought her eye abruptly back to the scope.
A bare second after the sound, the robed figure strode forward.
Without looking at anything around him, he moved fast, aiming his feet for the opposite side of the warehouse. Through the scope, Chandre saw his narrow face set in an expression so furious that she found herself holding her breath, and not only for the shot.
He’d only made it a half-dozen more steps before she drew a bead on him.
She followed him for a few paces more, to be sure she had the exact speed of his long legs. Then, holding her breath for real that time, she stilled her whole body...
And fired.
She knew even before she finished squeezing the trigger that she’d made the shot.
Even so, she didn’t raise her head from the infrared scope until she saw the spray of blood. She watched it plume out, just behind the area of his head, right before the robed figure stopped, one foot swaying in the air, nearly mid-step.
Then, entirely without fanfare, he crumpled soundlessly to the cement floor.
Chandre checked it with her physical eyes, too, just to make sure, but didn’t waste time beyond the initial confirmation. Opening her light to let out the signal flare, she emitted one, strong blast to brothers Wreg and Balidor on the other side of that line.
Then she returned her eyes to the scope.
Her next target was the nearest of the black clad infiltrators.
Now, there was no need to wait.
She simply began to fire.
“HELP ME, TERRY!” I snapped, still fighting to see past the blood dripping down my face. “Get him out of the way!”
I’d dragged Revik’s body most of the way to the barred cages on my side of the aisle, but he was damned heavy, and I was wearing the most impractical shoes imaginable for dragging unconscious husbands across cement floors in the middle of a firefight.
Terian walked up to me willingly enough.
Not even bothering to duck to keep out of the way of the firefight, he gripped Revik’s other arm. Around us, Jax, Chinja, Stanley, Deklan and Anale continued to fire at black-clad infiltrators from behind crates on either side of the wider aisle. I saw Surli loading a new magazine next to two of the Terian bodies, the one that looked like Revik and the Arabic-looking one, both of whom I’d forgotten about since we got in here.
They were firing on the black-clad soldiers, too.
Between me and Terian, we got Revik behind those same crates.
I’d already checked his head... and his pulse.
He wasn’t bleeding as much as me, but he had a massive lump on the back of his head that scared the hell out of me, even beyond how little I could feel of his light.
“You better not have killed him,” I snapped at Terian, fighting to control the fear that wound through my light. I crouched next to him again, caressing his face, feeling his skin and throat under my fingers, reassuring myself that he was still alive.
Terian chuckled, gesturing in the negative when I looked up.
“Young love. It is so fickle.”
Looking up long enough to scowl at him, I tried to find it funny, but couldn’t.
By then, that same Terian with the amber eyes and the dark red hair was crouched behind the crates too. He peered past me for a few seconds, his gaze following the firefight with some interest before he glanced down to grin at me yet again.
“Do not worry, my lovely, lovely sister Alyson. I would never kill Revi’. He’s my brother.” Smiling wider, he inclined his head sideways. “Anyway, don’t you know? Revi’s almost impossible to kill. Compared to most people, especially. Most people are very very easy to kill. Like butterflies. Or a person’s dreams.”
I grunted at his words, trying to find the humor in those, too, and failing.
Still fighting anger, I tried to shove the fear from my mind, if only by focusing the direction of my thoughts elsewhere while I continued to hover over Revik.
“Where’s Feigran?” I asked Terian. My eyes scanned faces in the cages. “Is he here, Terry? Or was that another lie?”
Terian clicked at me softly, smiling as he shook his head.
“No?” I said, biting my lip to keep from snapping at him. He had, after all, just saved my life. Even if he’d done it in a way that made me want to punch him in the face. “No to which part? Terry, if he’s not here, then where the hell is he?”
Terian motioned with his chin towards the other side of the warehouse.
It took me a second. Then I found I understood.
“In the house?” I frowned, thinking. “Is that Feigran’s house, Terry? The one with th
e pool?” Understanding slowly made its way through my light, probably from Terian himself. “Is this boathouse on Feigran’s land?”
Grinning, Terian tilted his head yet again.
That time, I could have smacked him for real.
I really could have.
But yeah, he’d just saved my life, so I didn’t do it that time, either.
Instead, I held out a hand, fighting impatience when he just looked at it.
“Give my your gun, Terry,” I said, my voice hard.
“My... gun?” He raised an eyebrow at me, his expression openly puzzled.
Seeing the bewildered look on his face, it hit me. He wasn’t fucking with me that time. Well, he was, but not in the way I would have thought. He wasn’t reluctant to give me his gun.
He genuinely didn’t understand why I would need it.
After a few more seconds of thought, where I crouched there in that skin-tight dress, balancing on six-inch heels, I realized I didn’t really understand why I’d wanted Terry’s gun, either. My husband was lying unconscious on the cement.
We had––at minimum––over a hundred seers to move out of these cages.
And I was done with Dubai.
Like, really done with it.
Even as I thought it, I glanced over my shoulder at the crumpled form of Dalejem, feeling a sharper pain in my heart. I didn’t even know if he was alive. He hadn’t moved since Revik threw him against that wall, and I hadn’t been over there yet to check.
At the thought, I rose smoothly to my feet, igniting the higher regions of my aleimi before I’d even straightened to my full height. Immediately, the guns of several of the soldiers swiveled in my direction, but from those same higher structures, I already knew where they stood.
In less than a second, the cracking sound of exploding metal echoed through the warehouse space. I ignited the material in the plasma rifles pretty much simultaneously... but I still heard them one by one as they exploded at slightly different rates.
Feeling another gun go up in the half-second that followed, I ignited that one, too.
Then four more, as soon as I caught glimmers of the light of the seers holding them.
I still felt more angry, pissed off, and afraid for Revik than anything.
I also felt pretty damned impatient to get the hell out of there, probably because of those things.
Three more guns followed that last one, then I was scanning openly, searching the space for more of them. I felt two more infiltrators running out the back door, but I stopped them in their tracks, cracking their spines with scarcely a pause when it occurred to me they might be running to the house where Terian claimed Feigran was staying.
I felt a little guilty about those, but yeah...only a little.
When I finished, the warehouse felt really, really quiet.
It took me a few seconds more to realize that everyone left alive in it was staring at me, from the seers crouched behind crates directly in front of me, holding guns they were no longer using, to the rows of seers and humans filling the cages to either side of where we stood.
The silence went on for a few seconds more.
Then, out of nowhere––
Terian giggled.
IT DIDN’T TAKE as long as I’d feared to get everyone moving again.
Dalejem was alive, which I admit, filled me with relief.
Of course, there was no guarantee he would stay that way, and a really good chance he wouldn’t. Even so, I was relieved Revik hadn’t killed him instantly.
We used a couple of tarps and boards to build makeshift stretchers. Then I used some of the List seers and humans to carry Revik and Dalejem out of there.
I needed my infiltrators free to use their weapons and their sight.
Even among the Listers, I pulled a few with decent-seeming sight rank, who appeared to have some military savvy. Since we’d just freed them from a very unfriendly-looking cage, they didn’t argue when I put them under Surli’s command.
Then again, given what they’d just seen go down between me and Revik, as well as the way I must have looked with blood all over my face and what I’d done to those seers who had been firing at us––they might have been afraid to argue. Lending credence to the latter theory, the ones who eventually took guns from me and the others all made the respectful sign of the Bridge and kept their heads lower than mine when I addressed them.
Two of them voiced their allegiance to me then and there, which yeah, was unnerving.
I didn’t have time to worry about that now, though.
I got everyone moving instead, including Chandre after she’d jumped down from a high stack of crates, meeting us on the warehouse floor.
She told me at once that she’d already sent out the evac signal, and that Balidor had just transmitted back, telling her that they had boats on their way to pick us up. Balidor gave her an ETA of nine minutes before he’d have transport for all of us up the coast.
There, we’d return to land, still inside the security perimeter of the city, and walk out a secondary gate on the landlocked side. That same gate was where Wreg, Jon and the others were waiting for us, ready to lead us across the sand dunes and hopefully back to relative safety.
Hopefully.
According to Chandre, Balidor advised us we shouldn’t wait. He thought the construct may have been weakened by Menlim’s temporary demise, and wanted us out of there before that changed. He definitely wanted us out of there before they retaliated.
Which was perfectly fine with me.
I just needed to make one stop first.
I left most of them on the dock, behind the boathouse-slash-warehouse, waiting to signal our people to the shore. Surli and Stanley had instructions to start loading the wounded and the more civilian-types among the human and seer Listers while I went back for Feigran.
Bringing Chinja, Chandre, Jax and Terian with me, I stopped only long enough to switch out my high heels for boots from a female Dreng infiltrator I’d killed––trying really damned hard not to see the morbid crappiness of that as I did it––before we booked back across the lawn and towards the plantation-style house that lived on the other end of the grounds.
We found Feigran only a few minutes later.
He was sitting in the bubbling hot tub, staring up at the stars, a tropical drink clutched in one hand. He only lowered his chin to look at all of us after we’d clustered most of the way around the edges of the steaming, jet-filled water, and stared down at him.
Seeing me there, among the other faces, he broke out in a face-splitting grin, relief pouring out of his light, even as he let go of the drink, not seeming to notice when it disappeared under the surface of the frothing water.
Shaking my head at the expression there, I clicked under my breath.
But yeah, I couldn’t help it.
I grinned back at him.
Feigran, man.
What else are you gonna do?
34
SAND
WE WALKED FOR hours out in that desert.
Somewhere in those stretch of hours, I think my light finally calmed down enough that I was thinking clearly again, and more or less running on rationality versus pure emotion, instinct and adrenaline.
Balidor advised us to walk inland for as long as we could before we called in air support.
We did have one emergency landing and take-off, though, practically at the gates of the city itself. One of the carrier’s smaller helicopters came in for the sole purpose of picking up Dalejem and Revik. They took Feigran with them, too, but left the remaining Terians with us, including the Revik lookalike and the one with those opaque orange eyes.
I wasn’t positive what Balidor intended to do with Feigran once he got him on board.
But yeah, I could guess.
I wondered if the Terians could guess, too. If so, they didn’t let on as they trekked with us across those glistening white dunes in the dark.
We walked in silence mostly, although I could hear
murmurings here and there as stories were exchanged on several sides, including between the new Listers who had joined us and Wreg’s and Loki’s teams. Most of those stories were being told by the seers who had been with us in that warehouse on the furthest edge of The Waterfront.
I didn’t join any of those discussions, but not for any particular reason.
Neither did Chandre, I noticed, who walked silently next to me for most of the night, still wearing the rifle slung around her back that she’d used to take out Menlim.
I had a lot of questions about that, too. I knew Revik had put her up to following us to that warehouse. I knew it had partly been so she could cover our backs like she had done––and take out Menlim in a key moment so we could escape cleanly. I also suspected there was more to that little maneuver than it appeared. Whatever that “more” was, knowing Revik, it likely had something to do with finding a way to eliminate Menlim more permanently.
In addition to me and Chandre, I noticed Kat kept herself apart from the other seers as well, huddled inside a robe someone had given her, likely to cover the ridiculous clothing we both still wore as much as for the chill of the desert night air.
The sun was coming up to our right when I heard Wreg make the call to bring in the real air support, the ones meant to get us all out of there. As soon as he’d done it, I understood why––meaning why he’d decided to pull the plug now, before the sun got too high in the sky.
We couldn’t be walking out here under the sun.
Those beautiful white dunes would heat up in no time if we stayed out here, even if we only walked until mid-morning.
Anyway, we were probably far enough from the city by now.
I’d found out only after we’d reunited with Wreg and Jon that Balidor and the others had abandoned the carrier totally, even moving the last segment of the Barrier-containment tank and all of the animals to smaller ships, which they’d spread across the Arabian Sea, presumably to hide among the other ships operating in the area. Balidor told me over the same link that so far it seemed much easier to hide our numbers and purpose disguised as a more fluid caravan.
Allie's War Season Four Page 133
