Prophet: Bridge & Sword

by JC Andrijeski

  “Isre l’ange si nedri az’lenm…” The seer raised his deep voice louder. It reverberated through Chandre’s aleimi, despite her stillness. “Isre ti’a ali di’ suletuum… sala. Sala ‘ti. Sala ‘ti, mongare sa’… Alyson. Alyson!”

  Silence fell over the warehouse.

  Chandre wasn’t in the Barrier, so couldn’t feel any of what was going on from that higher perspective, but something about that silence felt charged.

  Even as she thought it, a commotion broke out in the area by those cages.

  She heard thuds, shrieks, screams, shouts of alarm, more than one crashing sound.

  She didn’t raise her eye off the gun’s sight.

  Whatever it was, she couldn’t help with it.

  She had her job.

  Stilling her light to that of the dead, she kept the scope focused on that line of crates, waiting for Shadow to emerge. He had to emerge, sooner or later.

  He had to.

  Chandre told herself that as she rearranged her hands on the organic rifle, holding her breath to steady her aim. She settled her weight more firmly on her grav-booted heels as she did, steeling her whole body, her whole mind, to wait for the shot.

  She’d been trained as a sniper.

  No matter what else was going on in the warehouse, her role was the shot.

  She had to wait for the shot.

  So that was precisely what she would do.

  59

  TAKING THE BULLET

  I WAS STILL lost there, in no time, staring up at Revik’s glowing eyes––

  When a shape appeared in front of me.

  Time roared back into the present.

  My light flared upwards in that half-instant of space that person bought me. The shape distracted Revik, pulling his eyes, pulling his light––maybe a fraction of a second, maybe not even that––but it was enough.

  It was enough to bring my telekinesis on line.

  My light filled every branch and tendril of the structures above my head, a pool of liquid fire that erupted like a geyser, gritting my teeth, making my hands clench into fists. Green-tinted white light blew out my physical vision––then that burning light flowed back down through my head and into my chest, arms, hands, legs, feet.

  It happened fast.

  Damned fast––which was lucky, because I would have been dead otherwise.

  Revik’s light erupted, reaching for mine––

  Mine reacted without thought. It slammed out of me in a curved, glowing shield, only to hit a hard wall as it collided with his.

  Green and gold, gold and green sparked and sizzled overhead.

  Two curved arcs of light exploded past our physical forms. I shuddered under the crackling current, my whole form vibrating under the voltage of his light.

  For a long-feeling couple of seconds, neither overpowered the other.

  He shoved at me in that space, and I shoved back.

  The light crackled louder and higher, but neither of us moved.

  Then he did something to twist around my light, moving so quickly that I let out a startled gasp. We broke, and I found myself standing there, panting, facing him.

  Whoever had stepped between us was still there, I realized.

  “Get the fuck out of the way!” I shouted at his back.

  I reached for him, meaning to shove him physically away from both of us, before Revik snapped his spine––but before I could, his body jerked sideways as if he’d been hit by a wrecking ball. I didn’t follow the motion with my eyes.

  I had enough presence of mind to know that I couldn’t, but I felt whoever it was hit hard against the metal bars of the cage, a good fifteen feet from where we stood.

  Silence fell over the space.

  The other seers stood around us, paralyzed.

  For another long breath, I think I might have been paralyzed too, staring up at Revik even as fear coursed through my light.

  Unlike Revik with me right now, I didn’t want to hurt him.

  That not wanting to hurt him would not help me.

  It wouldn’t help Lily.

  My mind spent less than a millisecond on that knowing, but it sent terror through me.

  Somewhere in that, my light flicked out, touching the bare edges of the body now crumpled on the cement floor like a broken doll. I tasted it only long enough to recognize the high-cheekboned face, the long black hair that fell over his neck, his green, violet-rimmed eyes. I could feel those eyes closed. I knew they may never open again, but I knew who it was, even though I couldn’t look for long, not even with my light.

  Dalejem.

  Dalejem stepped between me and Revik.

  He just saved my life.

  Well––temporarily, anyway.

  Around me, voices erupted.

  I felt hands on my arms, pulling me back, but I knew it wouldn’t do any good. I didn’t even waste the breath or my concentration to tell them that, but continued to stare at Revik, my light charged, still wound densely into the aleimic structures I used for the telekinesis.

  Unfortunately, so was his. I could see it in his eyes, even as that high frequency of light vibrated my skin.

  When they grabbed hold of me a second time, I elbowed them off, gasping as I watched the structures in Revik’s light ignite again.

  “Get back!” I shouted, not tearing my eyes off his face. “Get back! Fuck! Are you stupid?”

  I managed to writhe free of them––right before I slammed out at Revik with my light.

  The force of my blow threw the seers away from me.

  It also threw Revik’s back into the bars of the nearest cage.

  I saw his eyes close, a bare shimmer of pain in his long body, but he didn’t lose his balance.

  He didn’t lose his focus, either.

  Before I could take a breath, he hit out at me with his light––a fuck of a lot harder than I’d hit him. The thought flashed in me again of how much harder it would be to stop him when I was terrified of hurting him. Unlike me, he threw everything he had at me the second that gap hit after I’d expelled most of my light.

  My feet left the ground.

  It happened fast, so fast, my vision blurred, blinding me again.

  I barely had time to construct a shield––something Revik, incidentally, insisted I learn, hammering it into me, again and again––but I managed it somehow midair.

  I moved so fast, it sucked the breath from my lungs, hurting my back and neck from the displacement of the air even before I hit. Then the shield was around me, and I crashed into the first solid thing between Revik and where I’d started, which happened to be a crate a good fifteen feet off the ground.

  Slamming into it, right into my back and neck, I let out a stunned gasp of air.

  Even with the shield, it knocked the wind out of me completely.

  Worse, I lost hold of the shield from the impact, and dropped like a stone. I landed, hard, on the cement floor, and cried out in pain.

  Revik didn’t wait.

  He threw his light at me again before I could recover––then he was trying to get at my bones, specifically my spine, my neck.

  Realizing he was trying to snap one or both, I shoved out at him with my light, crying out in terror. That time, I hit at him harder, before I could wrap my mind around hurting him, or how much to hurt him, or whether I could even risk trying to knock him out, given how easy it would be to kill him that way, too.

  I was holding back too much. I could feel it, but I didn’t know what to do.

  I was going to get me and him and Lily killed.

  At the thought, a scream built at my lips.

  I slammed him into the bars for real, hard enough that I saw his eyes roll back in his head, right before he sank to his knees, falling to the floor.

  “STOP!”

  I shouted it at him, filling my words with light, dragging myself to my feet.

  “STOP, REVIK! NOW!”

  The light in my words buffeted his structure, hitting at him like liquid
wind.

  “REVIK! STOP THIS! IT’S YOUR WIFE! YOU NEED TO STOP!”

  I held up a hand, my heart slamming in my chest from the effort of hitting him with so much, using my voice to channel the light I threw at him. I tried to reach him past the illusion I felt there, trying to penetrate the fog around the structures of his aleimi, strangling his mind, erecting that wall between my light and his.

  “REVIK!” I hit at the fogged wall harder. “REVIK! Snap out of it! Now! You’re going to kill both of us! You’re going to kill Lily!”

  Still on his hands and knees, he slammed out at me again.

  I fought to meet him in the space.

  I blocked part of the hit, lessening the force, but he managed to slide around my light before I could push him back for real. Once free of our locked lights, he threw me back against the bars of the opposite wall, hard enough that I let out a groan, falling to my knees, just like he’d done.

  I kept my head on straight enough that I didn’t let go of my light, though––and when he met me in the space, I threw up another arc of current, fighting to keep him from getting close enough to kill me.

  Blood flowed from my head, making me blink, dripping down my neck.

  The distraction of it getting in my eyes bothered me the most.

  I couldn’t afford to be distracted for even a millisecond.

  Even so, I fought with a wave of dizziness by the time he finally backed off. He didn’t give me long to recover. I’d barely regained my hold on those structures in my aleimi before we were struggling in the space again, each trying to knock the other unconscious.

  The difference was, I knew he’d kill me once he’d done it.

  Worse, I could already feel which way this was going.

  I felt it even after I hit out at him again, knocking him back into the steel bars.

  He was gaining on me.

  He had access to more light, more tricks, more experience. He’d logged hundreds of more hours on the field. He hadn’t fought other telekinetics, but he’d engaged in more psychic warfare, and most of the same principles applied.

  He gasped, slamming out at me harder.

  That time, I barely managed to get the shield up in time to deflect the worst of it. Anticipating the shield, he twisted around its edges, hitting at me from the side, and I fought to compensate, blocking his light instinctively.

  He was still gaining on me––and now he was learning me, too.

  He felt my reluctance to hurt him. He felt those lines I shied away from, those I wouldn’t cross at all, and I saw a smile touch his narrow lips.

  I felt the Dreng helping him now, too, yanking parts of me into the construct as I struggled to think, to decide how I could end this without splitting my husband’s skull open.

  I shoved him off me again, right before a sideways flick of his light darted out, throwing me so fast I didn’t manage to pull the shield around me in time to lessen the blow. Gasping, I hung in space on the wall by the same cage, staring through the bars, barely seeing the pale faces that stared back at me.

  I saw their expressions, though.

  Terror filled their eyes as the light from my irises reflected in theirs.

  In that split second, I realized he could kill me. I threw up a wall of light, cracking into his, breaking his hold, but it didn’t lesson the terror I felt when I realized he’d had an opportunity to kill me and hadn’t. It hadn’t been mercy that stopped him, or a memory of who I was––a part of him was playing with me. I could even feel the part of him that enjoyed this, that enjoyed a good fight. He didn’t want it to end too soon.

  He’d never had anyone to fight like this before.

  He’d never had an equal.

  I could feel a flicker of the real Revik in that, somewhere under the clouds of Dreng light.

  None of it mattered, though. None of this would help.

  He was going to kill me. He was going to kill himself.

  He was going to kill our daughter.

  He tried to throw me sideways again, but I smacked down the snaking tendrils of light, right before he went after my heart, crushing it briefly in my chest before I managed to force him off, hitting out at him with a denser bolt of light.

  While he gasped from my hit, laughing by the cage wall, I clutched my chest from what he’d done, fighting to recover even as he went after that part of my light he liked to coil into when we had sex. Panicking when I realized what he was after, I fought to keep him out, but I felt him getting into my light through the threads that connected us, deeper that time––

  Too deep. Deeper than I could extricate myself.

  My separation pain spiked as my light opened, that part of me that wanted so desperately to coil into him, to rebuild the bond Terian weakened over the past month.

  Remembering Lily, I gritted my teeth, sending a hot dart of light at his belly, through the same line of connection. He let out a groan, loosening his hold even as desire slammed back at me. But again, it wasn’t a desire for sex that would actually help me.

  I felt desire for fucking, killing, death, fighting tangled up in the same hot flood.

  Forcing out a brilliant burst of light, I tried to break his hold altogether.

  Feeling his grip on me weaken with that burst, I grabbed the steel bars more tightly in my hands, using them to drag myself to my feet.

  Turning, I hit him with a cluster of hits from multiple sides once I was upright, trying to distract him enough to get him off me for real––if only to give myself breathing room.

  I felt my light hit him in multiple places, sliding past his shields at the last minute when I traced that pain back to his own half-severed bond. He gasped, then saw what I was doing and tried to block it, but too late. Even so, the blow that finally reached him was definitely weaker than the one before it.

  It got him to let go, but for barely a half second.

  Then he was after me again.

  He wouldn’t stop. Menlim wouldn’t let him stop.

  Eventually, he would grow tired of playing. Eventually, he would get in. He’d get in for the same reason I could always get past his defenses, even when he was a servant of the Dreng.

  He would get in because, at base, my light didn’t want to shut him out.

  “Revik,” I groaned. “Revik. Don’t do this, baby. Please. Please––”

  He was using the bond.

  Sex, the bond––us.

  He was using us.

  I couldn’t fight us. I never could.

  “I love you,” I gasped.

  He didn’t hear me––or if he did, this version of him didn’t care. It was just noise, more distraction, irrelevant. His light used everything that connected us to one another, every thread and memory, every resonance he’d painstakingly tended, even as Syrimne. Only now he was using it to try and kill me.

  Feeling my walls sliding, losing ground, I fought harder, trying to force him out. I barely managed to slow him down.

  “Revik… LILY! You’re going to kill Lily! OUR DAUGHTER!”

  I slammed out at him again, hard enough to throw him backwards, into the cage.

  I watched as he fell, then I shoved him away from me, sideways across the floor on his stomach. His fingers grew bloody, and his arm, but it seemed like bare seconds passed before he stopped his own momentum, gripping the cement with his fingers.

  His long legs splayed where he sprawled between both sets of cages.

  That time, his eyes flared nearly white, right before he cracked out with his light, hard enough to take my breath, even before it hit me.

  The force ripped me off the bars, again making my feet leave the ground. The force of the hit sending me flying, weightless, too fast to construct a shield. I existed in that silence for a bare instant before slamming into a crate with my side and the small of my back.

  The thing was heavy, but the force of the blow moved it, right before I crumpled at its base.

  I hadn’t managed to shield the blow at all that time.r />
  That time, all I could do was lie there for a few seconds, gasping.

  Blood ran freely down my face when I raised my head.

  I fought to blink through it, to focus my eyes. I focused my light, fighting to shield, but fear exploded over me when I realized I could already feel him inside my aleimi, winding through my bones and flesh.

  He was going to kill me. He was going to kill me and Lily.

  He was going to kill himself.

  Even as I thought it, there was a dull THUNK.

  It came from somewhere behind me.

  The sound was muted, but strangely loud behind my eyes, reverberating through me. I felt and heard it so deeply I flinched in reflex, ducking my head.. I was sure it was the end. I waited for something to hit me from behind, to cave in the back of my skull.

  But whatever happened, it hadn’t happened to me.

  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 slowly turned my head, looking over my own shoulder. I blinked through blood that now ran freely down my face, blinding me to 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 trickling over my eyebrows.

  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 pleased expression.

  Then I saw the metal pipe he held. He gripped it in both hands, 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.