Allie's War Season Two

by JC Andrijeski

  He kissed me again, more lingeringly that time.

  “I may need to hire you a seamstress,” he murmured with a smile.

  His restraint was back too, though. I felt him withdraw enough to assess me...the look on my face, my light. Maybe because he felt something on me, or maybe for some other reason.

  I didn’t let myself think about that for long, either.

  I found myself looking at his body, feeling him do the same to me.

  It was strange, how much the same he could look. Despite the added bulk, and the longer hair, all the scars were in the same place, the tattoos on his arms...the clan mark below his navel. His eyes were the same, although the look in them had altered. His cheekbones, the line of his jaw, the shape of his mouth...none of it was different. It was like watching someone else ride around in the corpse of the man I’d loved.

  I fought that out of my light too.

  Then something else struck me.

  I hadn’t felt anyone else on him. No one new, anyway.

  I’d felt D.C. of course. I’d felt it in graphic detail, unfortunately...enough to make me cry, which infuriated me afterwards, but seemed to touch him, even though he insisted it hadn’t meant anything, that it didn’t matter.

  But I hadn’t felt anyone else.

  No hookers. Not even any humans. I’d been pretty sure I would feel someone else there, if not multiple someones. I’d more hoped it wouldn’t be anyone I recognized.

  Gripping my hair, he let out a short laugh. I was startled to hear some hurt in it.

  “You thought I’d be screwing around? Thanks a lot...”

  “Why wouldn’t you be?” I asked him, blunt.

  It came out before I thought about it clearly. Once it had, though, I turned my head, and found his face had hardened.

  His voice mirrored his expression. “Because I’m married, Alyson.”

  When I rolled my eyes a little at that, his anger grew more audible.

  “Gods. You really don’t know me at all, do you?”

  I didn’t bother to state the obvious on that, either.

  I felt him back off, as if thinking. When he spoke next, his voice was cautious.

  “Allie,” he said. “How long are you going to punish me for that? You know why I did it...you know why.”

  But I didn’t know why, not really.

  And anyway, it was hardly the point.

  When I didn’t answer, he kissed me again, harder that time, pulling on me with his light. I felt possessiveness on him, a near frustration when I withdrew my light from his, refusing to go there with him again. He held me closer, caressing my cheek with his fingers, trying to get me to soften, to let him back in. My breath grew short when his hands roamed lower, but he didn’t prolong things when I still wouldn’t open my light to his.

  Seconds later, he gave up, pulling away.

  I watched as he climbed to his feet and began to dress. Yanking it up off the floor, he pulled the white tux shirt on over his shoulders, and I found myself staring at the scars there, swallowing as the shirt covered them.

  I thought about his words, in spite of myself.

  It would be just my luck that this would be the version of him that would be faithful to me.

  “Alyson...” He turned, looking at me. “Stop this.”

  “Stop what?”

  “This!” he said. He gestured towards me, his eyes and voice openly angry. “This...game you’re playing. It’s too late to be having second thoughts about us!”

  “Second thoughts?” I said, numb.

  “Come with me, Allie. Tonight. Please.”

  I just looked at him.

  “I’ll spoil you rotten,” he said, smiling. “...I promise, Allie.”

  I shook my head, rolling to my back.

  “You’re serious,” he said. “You’re fucking serious about this?”

  It was my turn to give him an incredulous look.

  “You know I can’t, Revik,” I said.

  Frustration glimmered in his eyes. “Is it really what happened during the op in D.C.? If that’s why you’re not coming back, then—”

  “That’s not why, Revik...and you know that, too.”

  For a moment he just stared down at me. Then his pale eyes grew cold once more, watching mine with a scrutiny on the surface.

  “Are you fucking someone else, Allie?”

  I made an irritated sound, sitting up. I looked again at the state of the dress, the broken straps, the tear down the front and up to my waist on one side. It occurred to me I had nothing to wear out of there. But when I glanced over, he was still staring at me, his eyes hard as glass.

  “Alyson?” he said. “Are you going to answer me?”

  I shook my head. “No. I’m not going to answer you.”

  I barely took a breath when he was crouched beside me once more, gripping my hair in one hand. “Allie,” he said softly. “Answer.”

  I shoved his hand away. “No, I’m not sleeping with anyone...”

  “Allie. Tell me the truth...”

  “The truth?” I stared at him. “Jesus, Revik. Okay, here’s the truth. I’m not the one who fucks around...you’ve pretty much lost your license to ask at this point.” Seeing his eyes change, carrying a whisper of guilt alongside that wary look, I looked away, fighting to keep my expression still. When he rose to his feet, I said after him,

  “You know, that wasn’t a very attractive trait of yours before...when you were just Revik.” I swallowed, watching him zip up his pants. “...I think I like it even less now.”

  His voice grew cold again. “Just so we’re clear...I expect you to respect our marriage, Allie. Whatever you think I’ve done...or why.”

  “Meaning what?”

  He shrugged, tying his tie in front of the long wall mirror. A crack decorated one side of it, one I realized hadn’t been there before we started.

  “Can I get some clothes, at least?” I said.

  “Someone will be along soon, I imagine,” he said.

  Once he said it, I found myself feeling what he meant.

  Activity in the construct...of course. I’d been gone a lot longer than Balidor’s patience would have been able to stand. They were looking for me.

  “Balidor...” Revik muttered by the mirror.

  I looked over, but he didn’t return my gaze.

  Scanning him lightly, I realized he was cloaked once more. I couldn’t feel him at all. He shouldered on the tuxedo jacket while I continued to study his light.

  His eyes met mine, but that time, they were all business.

  “If you’re really not coming, I have to go, love. Let’s not wait so long next time.” His eyes locked on mine, holding an added meaning. “I’ll wait, Allie. But not forever.”

  I didn’t answer that, either.

  I was still sitting there, my weight propped on my arms, when I heard the door close behind him.

  It wasn’t until he was really gone that my throat closed.

  I fought to breathe, but only lay there, still propped up on my arms...and realized I was breathing too much. I clenched my stomach with one arm, as if to hold it inside, but it didn’t help...it only seemed to wrench me in half.

  It took me another moment to realize I was trying to cry and couldn’t.

  JON WATCHED BALIDOR and the others as they geared up.

  Several added the heavier and longer organic guns to their arsenal; throwing dark, knee-length coats over their shoulders to conceal them from human eyes as they made their way through the hotel to begin their search.

  Jon felt a little sick as he saw Balidor motion for sight restraint collars to be brought as well...although he knew there was a pretty long chance in hell they’d ever get one on Revik, at least while he was breathing. Jon had a feeling his brother-in-law would kill every last one of them dead before he’d let someone put a collar on him again.

  Jon himself had shown up late for the excitement earlier.

  He’d seen them dancing though, from a distan
ce. He’d almost laughed when he saw it, actually...it was just too surreal, seeing Revik in a tux, newly shaved, wearing an expensive haircut and shoes, holding Allie in that dress that made her look like some kind of movie star from a bygone era. Even Jon had to admit, she looked pretty stunning in that dress.

  She’d changed so much though, in the past two years, he had trouble remembering what she’d looked like before. She was still growing...some kind of weird seer thing where she had growth spurts into her late twenties...but it wasn’t just that. Her features had changed, too; her face appeared sharper, more feline somehow. Her eyes seemed to grow larger and lighter, both in color and in the sense of...something...lying behind them. They slanted more at the edges as her face altered, throwing her ethnicity into question with her darker skin from living in India. Her mouth seemed fuller, too, her cheekbones higher.

  She’d been pretty before, in San Francisco, but he’d never thought of her as particularly exotic-looking. She’d had men after her, for as long as he could remember, but he, Cass, and Allie herself always joked it had more to do with her indefinable weirdo-magnet charm than it did her looks, per se.

  Now, though, after all this time with seers and hours and hours spent practicing mulei, the seer martial art form, she was beginning to look a lot like the rest of them. Feral, somehow...and strangely half-present...almost as if some part of her watched him from a great distance, even when they talked.

  Watching her and Revik together, he had to admit to a similarity there, between them...maybe even more than before, which frightened him a little. Revik had been looking at her as if noticing changes himself...at least until Balidor approached the two of them, holding his hand out in a way that strongly suggested ‘gun.’

  Jon watched Allie say something that got Balidor and his people to back off, albeit reluctantly...and Balidor last of all. Then Revik led her through the scattered clusters of humans, purposefully weaving his way past the seers gathered less conspicuously to corner him.

  This new Syrimne/Revik had panache...Jon would grant him that. Showing up in a tux, pulling Allie into a dance in front of every major feed network and the entire protective detail of the Seven...and then just walking off the floor with her without a backward glance...it was ballsy even for the Revik he’d known, who’d hardly been a coward.

  Jon knew from listening to their back and forth on the network that Balidor and the others assumed he’d left the building with her. Jon himself didn’t believe it, though. He couldn’t have said why, but he trusted his gut in terms of Revik, even now.

  Anyway, from the expression on Revik’s face as he looked at Allie in that dress, he hadn’t been in the mood to wait a few hours.

  No, he had her somewhere here, in the hotel.

  As soon as he thought it, Jon found himself positive it was true.

  Leaving the rest of them behind the stage to do their wacky military thing, he walked back out to the main ballroom, letting himself disappear into a crowd that mostly seemed clustered around the bar and the buffet table covered with multi-colored hors d’oeuvres. He saw a few of the reporters talking though, and it struck him that Allie’s absence had been noted in the hour or so since she walked off the floor with Revik. He wondered how long it would take someone to think to roll the recordings back, to see who she’d left with while they’d all been pushed by seers to look the other direction.

  He shoved it from his mind, feeling another pull to go find her.

  Minutes later, he found himself wandering down the hallway where he’d last seen the two of them. At the end of the marble passage decorated with a rich, red carpet runner, he wasn’t particularly surprised to find a service elevator.

  Without thinking about it too much, Jon walked inside.

  Logic granted him the reasons in retrospect. Whatever else might have changed about Revik, he had his doubts that some things had changed all that much...like his near-inability to go through the front door whenever a back door was available. Or his hatred of underground spaces.

  While not a back door, exactly, the service elevator was neither too obvious for Revik to avoid...nor inconspicuous enough for the Adhipan to suspect.

  And while it might lead down, it also led up.

  Jon got on, and looked at the buttons. He hit the square marked “PH” for Penthouse, again on a hunch. It was that or the basement. Again, Revik would want a way out...if it wasn’t a car waiting below, it would be a helicopter up top.

  And there was his whole basement thing.

  Jon knew what he was doing was likely useless. But he also knew that no one would notice his absence. One thing about being a human...when things got serious, the seers tended to dismiss him out of hand. Not due to any maliciousness on their part. They simply forgot about him.

  Cass, because she was Cass, inserted herself anyway. Jon tended to let them sideline him...partly because of personality, and partly because the advantages of operating under line of sight appealed to him more than the disadvantages of fighting to be heard. He tended to be privy to a lot, simply because they forgot he was there.

  He was also relatively free to follow his own predilections, if they didn’t happen to go along with the approach of the larger group.

  The ride to the top felt long.

  Jon found his nerves inching higher the further he traveled up floors. He had a bad feeling about whatever Revik hoped to accomplish that night...beyond his more obvious interests with Allie. He’d seen too much of the uglier sides of his friend in the last few months to believe he’d picked tonight, of all nights, at total random to reunite with Allie.

  Besides, this wasn’t just about him getting laid. He wanted Allie with him, permanently. He could be planning to use her to make some sort of statement to the human world...or worse, kidnap her to force the Seven Tribes to ally with his growing army of rebel seers. No matter who she was to him, no way would Revik be blind to the power she had, both in terms of who she was, and what she could do.

  Unlike Balidor though, Jon couldn’t discount his brother-in-law’s feelings entirely. He’d seen too much to believe Revik could be viewing Allie purely as an asset, at least not overnight...no matter how much he’d changed.

  Even before he’d killed the boy, he’d basically turned to the dark side in order to get her away from Terian. He’d gone insane, when all was said and done...Terian took her while Revik and Allie were in the middle of some seer bonding ritual, and he’d essentially cracked.

  Whether it made any difference in the long run, though, considering what happened after, was anyone’s best guess.

  But he did rescue her from Terian...if it could be called that.

  Jon knew the thing with Allie and Revik was complicated by biology and religion and seer myth and a hundred other things that had to do with being a seer. He also knew, from his time imprisoned with Revik in the mountains, that Revik had lost a wife once before.

  Vash, the old seer who used to run the Seven, also told Jon that Revik had been abused severely as a child, in part by being left alone for long periods of time. Apparently, that was even worse for a young seer than it was for a young human. Seers needed contact...physical, but also with their light, in the Barrier. If they didn’t get it for long enough, especially if they were collared and cut off from the Barrier, they generally either went insane, or died.

  The fact that Revik had survived at all, given everything, was a kind of marvel in the first place.

  All of that had to be playing into things, even before the thing with the boy went down and he took a big step off the edge and into the abyss altogether.

  Jon was still thinking when the elevator car slid to a halt, letting out a low tone right before the heavy, cargo-type doors began to open. He barely stepped out from between them when he heard footsteps and turned his head to look down the corridor.

  He found himself staring at Revik.

  He blinked, sure he was hallucinating.

  The smile on the tall seer’s face convinced hi
m he wasn’t.

  He had a shiner...a red mark under one eye that would probably turn dark in a day’s time. It looked like someone had punched him in the face.

  Two seers flanked him, each of them as bulked up as Revik appeared to be, though neither as tall. One of the new ones laid a hand on his hip, undoubtedly reaching for a gun, but Revik didn’t seem to notice, his pale eyes still on Jon.

  “Hello, little brother,” he said. He smiled wider as he tapped his temple. “You heard me...” He glanced at the other two seers. “This is my brother-in-law...don’t be stupid.”

  Both seers glanced at Revik, then lowered their weapons.

  Jon barely had time to look at the guns before Revik’s voice pulled his eyes back to his tanned face. He found himself staring at the mark under the seer’s eye.

  “...and anyway, Jon here is a practically an honorary seer,” Revik said to the two guards. “I swear he’s less of a worm than some of the dregs of the Seven...isn’t that right, Jon?” The smile turned into a grin, even as he gestured, one-handed. “Look at this...I call him, and here he is! I couldn’t ask more from one of my own blood family...”

  Jon found himself staring at Revik’s face. He looked so genuinely happy to see him, it threw him for a moment, made it difficult to think clearly.

  The larger of the two bodyguards, a Chinese-looking seer sporting a long, dark braid and two thick arms covered in tattoos, grunted a few words in what sounded like Mandarin. Jon found himself staring at the broad face, recognizing it from Salinse’s cave after the attack in Seertown. The muscular seer looked less than impressed with Jon’s “honorary status,” but Jon felt himself being sized up regardless.

  “That’s him?” he said in accented English. “The brother-in-law?”

  Revik smiled wider, his eyes still studying Jon’s. “In the flesh.” He glanced at the other seer then, gesturing towards Jon in a flowing motion of one hand. “You see it, right? In his light? I theorize it’s my wife’s doing, of course...but still. Remarkable.”

  The other seer grunted again, noncommittal, but Jon felt his stare a second time.