Shield (Bridge & Sword: Awakenings #2): Bridge & Sword World

by JC Andrijeski

  “What the fuck is she doing here?” he said.

  Ullysa raised an eyebrow. She lounged liquidly on the velvet sofa, her dark red hair spilling down over her neck and décolletage. She seemed to be artfully arranged no matter what the occasion, even in their makeshift war room, but it didn’t make her any less valuable of an infiltrator.

  “You said to bring my infiltrators, Revi’,” she said, her eyebrow still arched.

  He glanced at Kat. “I didn’t mean her. Why the fuck would you bring her? You know damned well I can’t trust her with this.” He didn’t bother looking at Kat again as he spoke. “I want her out of here. Now.”

  Ullysa clicked at him softly. “You can trust all of us in this, Revi’. You know that. Kat will do her job.”

  Unconvinced, Revik turned on Kat, his mouth hard. “Anything happens to my wife and you’re anywhere near the cause and I’ll kill you.”

  “Or I will,” Jon muttered.

  The Russian seer looked hurt for an instant, but it left her face, leaving a colder mask. She glanced at Jon contemptuously, then up at Revik.

  “So I get death threats now? Is that how it is?”

  Revik didn’t lower his gaze.

  After a pause, Kat seemed to see something in his expression.

  She retracted her light. Clicking, she blew bangs out of her face, shrugging with one hand as she rolled her eyes.

  “Relax, Dehgoies. I am being paid, aren’t I?”

  Revik pointed at Ullysa. “I don’t want that bitch anywhere near Allie. I mean it. I’ll hold you responsible, ‘Llysa.”

  “Revi’…”

  “No arguments. Just agree with me and say, ‘yes, sir.’ She can mind-fuck Terian’s humans if she needs to get her claws in something.”

  Ullysa looked startled, but after a pause where she glanced searchingly at Jon, she looked back up at Revik. Making a conciliatory gesture, she exhaled hiri smoke as she gave him a puzzled look.

  “Yes, sir,” she murmured.

  He walked past them into the staging room beyond the parlor. Seeing Jon rise to his feet, he stepped aside to let the human enter in front of him, but not before he heard Kat mutter to Ullysa in Prexci,

  “Yes… this Bridge bitch is holy all right. Making Revi’ look and act like a Rook again. Or is it only me who notices?”

  “Shhh,” Ullysa murmured. “His wife’s been stolen, Kat.”

  “Fuck that. It’s no excuse for––”

  Revik let the door swing shut behind him, forgetting their words before he’d stopped hearing them. Watching Jon out of the corner of his eye, he focused on Wreg, wincing a little as he slumped into a chair to rest his leg.

  He couldn’t afford to be limping when they entered the building. It was the little things that might get him caught, and he knew they’d have gait-recognition software in the White House security feeds too, along with everything else. Knowing Terian, he might even think to flag anyone with a limp, just on the off chance.

  Wreg was arranging weapons on a long, wooden table.

  “You ready for your disguise?” he said, smiling at Revik.

  Revik ignored the jab, too.

  “Is the regular here?” he said instead.

  Wreg nodded towards a side door. Rather than get up, Revik pinged the seer in the other room through the construct. He waited, still massaging the top part of his thigh, until the male appeared in the doorway.

  “Okay,” he said, grinding his jaw against the pain in his leg. “Talk.”

  “Talk?” The seer’s sea green eyes widened a little.

  At Revik’s expression, his rounded face tightened, his smile wavering a bit as he glanced at Jon, then more reluctantly back at Revik. His blond hair was long, winding down the back of his neck. His face was almost feminine it was so pretty, but he didn’t carry the markers of a homosexual trick only, despite his obvious interest in Jon.

  His body was close. Not perfect, but close. Revik found himself thinking the unwilling was in better physical shape than he was.

  Still, it was easier to modify in that direction than the other.

  The young seer cleared his throat, folding his long hands. He’d been schooled around humans all right; even his mannerisms were flawless. Revik found himself looking the male over again, scanning his light.

  Wreg had chosen well.

  He motioned for the young seer to get on with it.

  “What do you want to know?” the male said.

  “Everything,” Revik said, still focused on his leg. “Tell me what you can, but mostly I want you to let me into your mind and light. Don’t keep a damned thing from me… not out of false modesty or national security or anything else. You won’t get a cent if I find out there was anything less than full disclosure. Further, I’ll make sure SCARB finds out about your little operation here if I’m not completely satisfied… assuming you don’t really piss me off and I just shoot off your cock and watch you bleed to death.”

  Letting a pause hang in the air, he held the unwilling’s gaze.

  “Are we clear?” he asked.

  Jon flinched, staring at Revik.

  The boyish face of the male unwilling faltered still more. He glanced at Jon, again seemingly looking for reassurance. He gestured affirmative.

  “Okay.” He straightened in his chair. “Where should I start?”

  “I said everything,” Revik growled. “Preferences, cutesy nicknames, rituals the two of you have… all of it. Walk me through a normal visit, and picture it in your head. Don’t spare a single detail, from the security guard at the front gate to whatever happens when you leave.”

  The boy, stammering somewhat, began to speak.

  As he did, Revik leaned back in the chair, entwining his light in that of the unwilling’s so he could not only hear his words, but see it, feel it, smell it along with him. He wove a map of the young seer’s light as he listened, storing it in the construct as he created it, so the team could map it too, ensure he didn’t miss anything. Whenever the boy’s mental timeline skipped, he stopped him, had him rewind, take him back through the next set of sequences until he understood it all.

  Once he’d gone from beginning to end, he had him describe a few more visits, noting any small variations. They were few.

  About two hours later, he began to relax.

  “All right.” He glanced at the seer from under his hand, stretching out his wounded leg. “Thanks. You can go. But stay available.”

  The unwilling rose to his feet, still visibly nervous as he left the room. He gave Jon a last glance as he left, and Wreg gave him a reassuring pat on the back as he walked by. Jon had a look of near incredulity on his face as he looked at the unwilling, then back to Revik.

  Revik didn’t bother to answer his stare.

  Most humans were surprisingly naïve about what went on in Sark fetish.

  For that matter, so was his wife.

  The thought brought a sharp stab of pain, bad enough to catch him up short.

  For a moment he only sat there, a hand over his face. He knew it was bad enough that the others noticed; neither of the two men tried to talk to him while he waited for it to pass. Once it began to ebb backwards he glanced to his right, looking at the bottle on the table nearest to Wreg.

  Following his glance, Wreg shook his head, clicking softly at him, his lips curved in a smile.

  “Maybe Salinse was right about you,” he mused, wandering towards the table. He picked up the bottle. “You’re quite the taskmaster when you’re motivated. Did you get what you needed?”

  “Most of it.” Revik nodded in thanks when the older seer poured and handed him a drink. Taking a long swallow, he relaxed deeper into the chair, rubbing his temples. “There’s still something that’s bugging me. I want to know how Terian knew where we were, in those mountains. Either someone told him, someone in the Seven or one of Balidor’s…” He glanced up, his jaw harder. “…or the boy led him there.”

  Jon still seemed to be fighting his equilibri
um back from the interview with the unwilling. “Which do you think it is?” he said finally.

  “The boy,” Revik said promptly, although he had no evidence to back his assertion. “What I don’t know is which of us he was tracking.”

  “Meaning?” Wreg said, eyebrow raised.

  “Meaning, he might not need to recognize me, if he already knows where I am,” Revik said. “If I’m his link to Allie, or if she’s his to me… either way, trying to fool him with a disguise might be a complete waste of time.”

  Wreg pondered this a moment, his expression thoughtful.

  “So you’d be walking into a trap,” Jon said.

  “Potentially, yes.” Revik drained the glass, setting it on the side table by his chair. Taking the half-full bottle from Wreg, he refilled the glass without looking up at either of them. “Unless we plan for being spotted. Unless I’m expecting him to find me.”

  “He won’t have your wife with him,” Wreg said, skeptical.

  “No,” Revik conceded. “Unless…”

  “Unless what?” said Jon.

  Revik frowned. He glanced up at Wreg. “He wants my wife to fall in love with him, right? The boy.”

  Wreg frowned back. “From what you said, yes.” He stared at Revik, as if trying to read past his eyes. Suddenly, understanding flared there, as the rest of Revik’s plan suddenly made sense.

  “That’s why you’re going in like this?” he said.

  Revik shrugged, his eyes flat. “It’ll have to be loud. From the Barrier, I mean. Loud enough to convince him it’s real… and that it’s me. Like you said, he wouldn’t have her with him otherwise. He’d probably even hide her away somewhere.”

  He added, no emotion in his voice,

  “…Unless I give him a reason to want her along.”

  Jon’s mouth fell open. He stared at Revik, his eyes showing disbelief, as if he was positive he was understanding him wrong. It irritated Revik more than he hoped showed that the human caught on so quickly.

  Once again, Jon wasn’t dumb. Or unobservant.

  Even Wreg hesitated, as if suddenly losing the desire to laugh.

  “It may not work,” he said. “You’re making a leap, extrapolating what he might do faced with a particular set of variables.”

  “Isn’t that what infiltrators do?” Revik retorted. “What about the variables? They make sense, right? Given what we’ve seen?”

  “Who will you use? The team has to change if we’re doing this for real. We need to give them a few options… and they need to be convincing.”

  “You don’t have any pros on your team? None at all?”

  “No. Well… one, maybe.” Wreg gave him a nearly apologetic look, one that told Revik he was making an effort to be polite. “We don’t generally do that, Commander Dehgoies. It goes against everything we stand for. Hardliners especially, and that’s just about everyone you hand-picked to come out here.”

  “Do you have anyone locally?”

  Wreg glanced towards the door. “You’ve got two pros out there…”

  “No,” Revik said.

  “What choice do you have?” He studied Revik’s face. “I understand that there’s a personal element… believe me, I do. But you’ve asked me to advise you on execution. No way can I recommend doing this solely with novices to back you up… or with unwillings who aren’t infiltrators. Either you use the two you’ve got, or we wait. Bring someone else in. You’re talking a few weeks’ delay at least, to weave them into the construct, establish their identity in D.C., brief them on the plan, coach them on details…”

  Revik frowned, staring at the door.

  For a moment, his eyes lost focus. He tried to buy time, to think. Looking for a second opinion, he glanced at Jon. The human was watching him as carefully as Wreg, but the frown creasing his forehead held more understanding in it.

  Allie must have said something to him.

  Again, he couldn’t think about her without pain.

  “It’s damned risky,” Wreg said seriously. “Even if you do use them.”

  “Anything would be risky,” Revik said, dismissive. “The boy is telekinetic. It took most of the Adhipan a year to best the last telekinetic seer, and I don’t have that kind of firepower… or time. I need to give him a reason to––”

  “Not the boy,” Wreg said. “Her. She might kill you, runt. Did that occur to you?”

  “Damn straight,” Jon said. Outrage trembled his voice. “I can’t believe you’re even considering this! There has to be another way.”

  Revik stared at the door, forcing his mind over options.

  Jon’s voice sharpened. “You can’t use Kat, Revik. You can’t.”

  Revik didn’t look at him. “It won’t matter who, Jon.”

  “Like hell it won’t! Would it matter to you if it was Maygar?”

  Revik hesitated, glancing up over the glass he’d refilled. Fighting a reaction out of his light, he took another long drink. Gesturing in acknowledgement with his fingers, he refilled the glass. He avoided Jon’s eyes.

  “We do it tomorrow,” he said. “I’m not putting it off another day.”

  Jon stared at him, open-mouthed.

  Wreg hesitated only a half-beat, then gestured in acknowledgment. He walked back towards the main salon. Hesitating by the leather chair, he stopped to look at Revik one more time.

  “You’ve got balls, runt,” he said. “I can’t decide if you’re a genius or a fucking idiot, but you’ve got balls. I’ll let the others know the plan.”

  After the door closed, Jon turned on him.

  “Revik, man. You can’t do this.” His face looked stricken. “Isn’t there some other way? Allie will freak out. She will totally fucking lose it.”

  Revik didn’t answer. Even so, he found himself thinking about Wreg’s comment long after the older seer had left him there with Jon and a bottle, in a beat up leather chair in a cramped, perfume-smelling room.

  The thought had occurred to him. More than once.

  Then he remembered Allie being dragged away screaming, climbing on Terian, clawing at him. He remembered the dead look in her eyes as she sat on a couch in the Oval Office, Terian caressing her collared neck with his fingers, like she were a particularly expensive whore.

  He took another long pull of alcohol, closing his eyes.

  He set the glass on the low table to refill it.

  Slumping back in the seat, he rubbed his temples as he slid into the Barrier, reworking several points of the plan over in his head, looking for flaws, running scenarios from different angles to catch anything he might have missed, anything he couldn’t account for.

  He couldn’t afford to get too drunk yet.

  That would come later, when he needed to force his body to sleep.

  When Revik still hadn’t answered him a moment later, Jon left the room, letting the door close none too gently behind him.

  40

  FAMILY

  IN THE MAIN salon, Jon sought out the only other seer he actually knew––the only one who still felt like a real ally.

  Not that Revik didn’t, exactly, but truthfully, Revik was more like family. Even apart from his relationship to Allie, Jon’s relationship with Revik had entered those murkier, more complicated waters sometime during their shared captivity.

  Jon loved the guy… a lot. But like all family, that also meant he periodically wanted to wring his neck.

  Besides, Revik wasn’t exactly running on all four cylinders at the moment.

  He found Chandre in a corner, poring over a detailed electronic schematic of the White House and its grounds. Glancing around at the other seers sitting and standing around the room, Jon sidled up beside her, talking low.

  “Someone needs to talk to him,” he said. “He’s totally fucking losing it, Chan. I mean whacko losing it.”

  He glanced over his shoulder, focusing on Kat, the Russian seer, who was staring at him narrowly from across the room.

  Turning back to Chandre, he watched the
dark-skinned, red-eyed infiltrator glance up from the maps, a frown on her sculpted lips. She pushed her braids out of her face, her expression unmoving as she went back to studying the detailed lines.

  Jon said softly, “Do you know what he’s planning to do? To get in there, I mean. To get that kid to come to him. Have you heard his idea?”

  Chan didn’t answer at first, her eyes still focused on the maps.

  “Chan!” Jon said. “Did you hear me?”

  After a pause, she lifted her eyes, giving him a level stare.

  “Did it occur to you, young cousin,” she said, her voice a hard whisper. “That his wife is likely being raped by Terian and the boy in turns, as we speak?”

  Jon hesitated at this, feeling his anger deflate.

  “Yeah,” he said. “It did, actually.”

  “Did it, now?” Chan said. “Well, do you think that maybe it occurred to Dehgoies as well… and that perhaps he isn’t willing to wait for a better, more squeaky-clean plan to get inside and help her?” Her reddish irises turned to glass, their gaze pointing inward. “The time for soft approach is over, Jon. They fucking stole the Bridge. They own her now. There is no negotiation. No legal means of taking her out. There is this, or there is outright war. The humans––”

  “Humans didn’t do this, Chan! Terian did this… one of yours!”

  “They are letting it happen!” she burst out. “They are enjoying this, Jon! You saw that bitch on the news! They are treating her like a zoo animal. Terian’s probably loaning her out to every worm with a hard on. Or did you think she got those bruises playing chess with the boy?”

  Jon pressed his lips together. For a moment, he had no response.

  It occurred to him then, that the words she’d just spoken didn’t feel like they came from Chandre alone. In fact, he couldn’t remember ever hearing Chandre use the word “bitch” before. Once he got that much, another understanding reached him.

  He glanced up and around them reflexively, as if it might help him see the construct with his physical eyes. Being human, he forgot what it was like for seers, with their minds often entwined like a single organism.

  “You can hear him,” he said. “Revik, I mean.”