Shadow (Bridge & Sword: Awakenings #4): Bridge & Sword World

by JC Andrijeski

  He gave me a faintly surprised look. “So?”

  “So,” I said, feeling my jaw harden. “How have you been feeling for the last few weeks, Revik?”

  His mouth curled into a frown, even as he averted his gaze, taking another drag off the hiri.

  Seeing the dismissive look on his face, I felt my own jaw harden.

  “Come on,” I said. “Tell me. Are you feeling like the mighty Sword now? Because I gotta tell you, I don’t see the man I watched lead the Rebels. I don’t see Wreg’s friend. I don’t see someone capable of leading other seers at all.”

  He exhaled smoke, his eyes on the ceiling, his face unmoving.

  Biting my lip again, I tried to read his expression, couldn’t.

  I hardened my voice. “I watched the tapes, Revik. Every session. Every conversation someone’s tried to have with you since you got here. I don’t care how angry you are. I don’t care how wronged you feel. Anger doesn’t explain the things I’ve seen.”

  Giving me a bare glance, he only shook his head, smiling faintly. While I watched, he leaned his head against the wall, blowing smoke rings with his lips and tongue.

  “How long did you practice this speech, love?” he said.

  Watching him, I felt a kind of tiredness fall over me. The posturing in my voice dropped in the same instant. I shook my head, exhaling.

  “Look, Revik,” I said. “I know you think you’re holding your own with me in this conversation. I know you do. Maybe you even think that you’re ‘beating’ me in some way, with the condescending jabs, or the fact that you can hurt me with Elise.”

  Feeling a pain briefly close my chest, I waited for it to pass before I added,

  “But you’re not winning, Revik. You’re not winning because there’s no way to win. You can hurt me all you want, but it won’t do anything. It won’t change anything.”

  I met his gaze, feeling my jaw harden.

  “You’re not him anymore. You’re not the Sword––if you ever were. The Sword wouldn’t have needed to talk to me like this. He’d probably be trying to negotiate with me right now. At the very least, he’d be more worried about his people than salving his own damned ego… or who his wife slept with while she was trying to get him out.”

  He turned at that, his eyes sparking with anger as they focused on me.

  For an instant, I thought I’d reached him.

  Then he looked away. His jaw hardened as he stared at the far wall, his aleimi flickering around him in darting sparks. I watched him bring whatever I saw wavering and jerking in his light under control. He winced when the collar kicked in, closing his eyes briefly, but kept most of his expression flat.

  Shaking his head, he ashed the hiri, then took another drag.

  “So let’s talk about it, then.” His voice grew cold, neutral on the surface. “That is, if you’re done insulting me, wife?”

  I gave a seer’s nod, gripping my knees tighter in my hands. “Okay.”

  “So this is your premise?” He rested his forearms on his knees, his voice conversational. “That I’m… what? Possessed? Or just compromised in some way?”

  “More the latter,” I said. “I believe the Dreng have forced a dependency into your light, by fracturing it in such a way that you can’t function effectively without them. Frankly, it does make you compromised. At the very least, it makes you vulnerable to them to an unacceptable degree. It also makes you dangerous, and not only to yourself.”

  There was a silence.

  He let out a disbelieving laugh, looking away.

  “Okay,” he said, still smiling. “And this is… what? Your last ditch effort to ‘save’ me, before your Adhipan boyfriend puts me down?” That cold, glassy stare returned to me. “How about we just settle this thing now? Unchain me, love. I’ll break your pretty neck, and we’ll both be done for this world. Wouldn’t that be simpler? Less of a time suck, too, for all of our friends out there.”

  Watching his face, I felt my nausea return.

  “Go on,” he said, softer. “Ask me if I mean it, love. Ask me.”

  My jaw hardened. “You’d prefer to die than take my help.”

  “I’d prefer to be the sex slave of a human leper to your help, wife.”

  Biting my lip, I shook my head, gripping my knees tighter.

  “What do you want, Revik? I know you want me to let you go, but what do you really want?” I looked up. “Don’t you ever want to be free of them? Menlim? Salinse?”

  Studying my gaze, he let out another humorless laugh.

  “Gods, just kill me, will you? If I have to spend the next however-many months listening to you talk to me about myself, I think I might bite open my own wrist.” He aimed another cold stare at my eyes. “What I want, wife, is for you to come over here so I can beat you to death with my bare hands. I’m beginning to think that’s the only thing that might actually shut you up.”

  Feeling my breath stop, I just sat there for a long moment, my eyes closed.

  Then I stood up.

  My heart jerked in odd, sideways leaps in my chest.

  My whole body tensed as I regained my feet, but I did it anyway. I hadn’t fully straightened when I sent the signal I’d programmed to the organics through the headset they’d given me.

  I could only hope Balidor wouldn’t notice, at least not right away. From the silence in my headset, I had to assume nothing showed up on their end.

  Taking another forced breath, I walked directly up to the line around where Revik sat.

  “You want to kill me, Revik?” I said.

  He smiled up at me, his eyes those of a stranger.

  “No, love. I want to make love by a fireplace and then cuddle, tell each other our secrets.”

  My face tightened.

  We’d done something not dissimilar to that once. I’d almost forgotten that Revik in the long months that had passed since he’d changed back into Syrimne. Looking at him now, I saw him again. I saw the Revik I’d met in San Francisco, the one I’d woken up next to in Seattle. The one I’d laughed with and become friends with and fallen in love with on the ship.

  I saw the one I’d married, really married, in that cabin in the mountains.

  Still looking at that Revik, I stepped over the line Balidor had drawn around him on the floor.

  12

  TAKE DOWN

  “WHAT IS SHE doing, what is she doing…” Jon muttered under his breath.

  He gripped his upper arms, hands clenching in the material of his long-sleeved T-shirt. Tensing, he watched Allie walk calmly to the edge of the circle drawn on the floor around Revik.

  At the expression on her face, he felt something in his stomach go cold.

  They’d had the audio playing over the whole staging area outside the tank, the volume cranked up loud enough that her and Revik’s voices could be heard, even if they whispered.

  Jon doubted he’d missed a word since it started.

  He’d listened to their exchange with a mixture of horror and disbelief.

  He’d actually been impressed at Allie’s ability to keep her cool. Revik had thrown his ex-wife at her, talked to her like she was a prostitute, threatened to kill her, told her she was brainwashed, told her she was stupid, laughed at her when she tried to be honest with him. Jon could tell, just from some of her reactions, that he was hitting more personal buttons with her, too, likely things Jon didn’t know enough to pick up on.

  He did pick up on a few things, though.

  He knew Allie was insecure about her intelligence, especially compared to Revik’s. He’d jabbed at that button a few times. The Elise thing was a low blow too, given how sensitive Allie was about the fact he’d been married before.

  Now Jon heard her voice come over the line clearly.

  “You want to kill me, Revik?” she said, her voice strangely calm, if tinny through the 1950s speakers.

  “I don’t like this,” Dorje said from next to him.

  “Me neither,” Jon said, not looking over.
<
br />   “No, love,” Revik’s voice came back.

  Jon saw the look on the seer’s eyes and his skin grew colder still.

  “…I want to make love by a fireplace and then cuddle, tell each other our secrets.”

  Dorje caught hold of Jon’s arm, his fingers tightening.

  Then Allie did what Jon had a sinking feeling she was going to do from the second she got up off that pallet. She stepped over the line drawn on the floor of the cage. Jon saw the cold anger in Revik’s eyes bleed rapidly into disbelief, then an even more predatory stillness.

  Balidor’s voice rose sharply from by the security console.

  “Alyson!” His voice came out as a command, but Jon heard the fear underlying his words. “Step back! Right now! Step the fuck back!”

  “No,” her voice drifted back through the loudspeaker.

  Quiet, almost distant.

  “Alyson! I will break the damned door down, if you do not step back this instant!”

  Jon watched her unhook the headset from around her ear before he’d finished speaking. She flung it behind her, a few yards outside of the drawn circle.

  The circle she now shared with Revik.

  “Goddamn it!” Balidor cursed, slamming his hand down on the console. He turned to Garend. “Hit the gas! Now! Knock them both out!”

  “I can’t,” Garend said, disbelief in his voice.

  “What do you mean, you can’t?”

  “It's been turned off… and the doors. She’s locked herself in. I’ll need to break the encryption code she’s got on this, first.”

  “Holy christ,” Jon muttered. “She planned this.”

  He watched Balidor and several of the other seers try to access the failsafe through their headsets––then through the Barrier––and fail.

  Jon glanced at Vash, who sat cross-legged next to Tarsi on the floor. The two of them shared a mat not dissimilar to the one Allie spread out inside the tank. Both of the old seers appeared to be watching attentively, but neither of them seemed surprised.

  Co-conspirators, he thought, even as Dorje gripped his arm tighter.

  Jon’s eyes jerked back to where Allie now stood directly over Revik, her hands open at her sides. She gestured at him, a seer question.

  Jon couldn’t help but think how small she looked, with her thin but muscular arms and legs, brown from the sun but feminine from the harem pants and ornate, pale-green blouse. Her dark hair hung down to the middle of her back, a thick, tangled mass of soft curls framing a narrow face with high cheekbones. Her light green eyes didn’t leave Revik’s face.

  She looked so… female.

  Jon didn’t always see her that way, in her combat gear and with her hair tied back, especially when they were sparring in mulei.

  But she looked vulnerable to him now, and small next to the man on the floor.

  “You want to kill me, Revik?” she said, her voice quiet in the silence of the room.

  Every set of eyes watched her. Every seer around Jon seemed to hold their breath.

  “…So kill me.”

  He moved so quickly that even Jon, who was used to tracking take-downs with his eyes, barely had time to see it. Revik yanked her down by the ankle, tripping her with his legs in the same swift yank. Without a pause, he dragged her under him, rolling over her and catching hold of her wrist in one hand.

  His other hand clenched on her throat. He used the same arm to pin her free arm as he crushed her legs and body with his, sinking his weight.

  In less than a blink, he had her completely immobilized, lying under him.

  Her free hand grasped at his fingers on her throat, looking small beside his, seeking purchase on the metal cuff around his wrist.

  Jon saw the fear in her eyes. From the dazed look on her face, she’d probably hit her head as she came down––or maybe that was from the hand around her throat, too.

  Every seer in the the room fell into dead silence.

  Then Balidor turned, and Jon saw a look on his face he’d never seen before. Fury filled it, along with a foreboding command that seemed to charge the whole room.

  “Break down the fucking door!” he said. “Now!”

  Seers around Jon moved abruptly to comply, even as Jon’s eyes returned to the view he could see through the transparent, organic pane.

  “Don’t,” he heard her say. He realized in some incredulity that she was talking to them, not to Revik. She was talking to the organic wall, to the mic embedded inside, her free hand held out towards the seers on the other side. “Don’t… break in… it’s all right…”

  Revik, looking down at her, smiled.

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that, love,” he said softly.

  His words seemed to echo in the small security room outside the tank.

  13

  RECONNECTION

  I STARED UP at him, fighting to breathe, to get my equilibrium back.

  My head hurt. The back of it throbbed; I knew I’d have a lump there from where it smacked against the floor. I fought my way back through the daze that remained, trying to focus on the angular face hanging over mine, the clear, crystal-like eyes.

  Already, his light was crashing into mine, sliding around it, into it.

  I gasped as I felt the changes in him, in his aleimi… fighting to adjust.

  I felt him doing the same, even as his face tightened.

  His eyes winced from the collar as his light flared into mine.

  His aleimi coiled into me harder, pulling at me as if fighting to hold me in place along with his hands. Even under the anger and the deluge of grief and fear and frustration I felt on him, that need wound the furthest into me, stronger than I’d ever felt it, even on the boy. He pulled at me with his light, a deprived, half-starved urgency woven through the threads.

  He hated me for it, but it didn’t change anything.

  I couldn’t think past it. I couldn’t even try to soothe either of our reactions with my own, un-collared light. There was nothing loving in it, or even specifically sexual.

  It was raw need, a need that would kill to be sated.

  I fought to adjust to having him back in my light, gasping against the hand that held my throat––and couldn’t. I tried opening my light more, to let him in, and felt his light surge around me even brighter, hot against my skin.

  He still held one of my wrists, his legs and body pinning me to the floor. My other hand gripped the metal cuff of the one he had around my throat.

  After another few minutes, I gave up trying to pry his hand off.

  “This is really what you want?” I managed, fighting for breath. “You’d really rather die, than live without the Dreng? Are you that afraid to be without them?”

  He laughed. “Sticks and stones, love.”

  “This isn’t necessary––” I began.

  “Necessary?” His smile hardened, his face directly over mine. “I suppose that’s all a matter of opinion, isn’t it? I guess, from a certain perspective, it wasn’t wholly necessary that you pretend to be my wife, infiltrate my military operation, drug me, kill half my crew, enslave the other half, and then stick me in a cage so you could use my marital bond to help your lover torture me?” His smile turned cold. “Or was there some biological drive calling the shots on that one, wife? Some preexisting condition I’m not aware of?”

  I was still trying to regain my breath when he lowered his mouth to my ear, speaking in a murmur, his lips brushing my skin.

  “Anyway, I don’t have to kill you, wife,” he said softly. “I can break every bone in your body… then I can play with you for awhile.”

  I felt myself wince. But I couldn’t play it cool anymore, either, not with his light winding and crashing and forcing itself into mine.

  Anger asserted itself, an irrational flush of emotion, hot in my light.

  “Go ahead,” I said. “I always knew it was bullshit that you’d never hurt me. Just the fact that you had to say it, over and over again––”

  He brok
e into my words, laughing again.

  Before I could react, he released my throat, sliding his hand down my body. He had it under my shirt and inside my pants before I knew what he meant to do. The chain and cuffs were cold on my skin, but his hand and fingers were warm.

  I gasped involuntarily, trying to writhe away from him.

  Then he slid his fingers inside me, and my whole body arched.

  “Gods…” I managed. “…don’t…”

  He slid his fingers deeper, deep enough that my mind briefly stuttered. The urgency in his light worsened, until I couldn’t see past it, couldn’t breathe. My eyes closed, and I gasped, clutching the front of his shirt with my free hand. When I opened them again, he was staring at my face, his glass-like eyes clinical.

  “You are hurting a bit, aren’t you, love?”

  He did it to me again, caressing me slowly and deliberately until I gripped his hair, crying out. His touch grew slower still, sensual as he leaned his weight on me, sliding his fingers deeper once more, arching against me until I couldn’t move.

  I felt his light pulling at mine violently, invasive as it dragged me into his. When I bit my lip, fighting not to cry out again, his eyebrow rose, even as his gaze flickered to my lips.

  “You want me to fuck you, Allie?” he murmured.

  “No.”

  He laughed. “Hell, I think I could have you begging me here in a minute.”

  I shoved at his chest, and he smiled, sliding his fingers deeper again.

  “Come on, love,” he coaxed. “Ask me for it… ask me…”

  “Stop…”

  He seemed somehow immune to his own light, to what he was doing to me. Whether it was because of the collar or for some other reason, I saw no indication on his face.

  His eyes turned clinical once more, studying mine.

  When he groaned softly in my ear, he wasn’t losing control; he used the sound to pull at me instead, his voice low, cajoling.

  “Remember, Allie?” he murmured. “That time in my room? When you let me tie you up? I think you would have done anything I wanted by the end of that night. I had blue balls so bad by the end I almost did hit you.”