It’s not her fault, Revik cuts in.
It comes out a snarl, even as his fingers curl protectively around her shoulder.
Jon ignores him, staring only at her. Goddamn it, Alyson. I will fucking hunt you down and kick your ass, if you leave us like this––
Jon, Revik warns, gripping her tighter.
Jon ignores him.
What about your DAUGHTER? If you don’t give a fuck about Revik and me… what about her? Do you really want Feigran and Cass raising your kid? Are you okay with Menlim and his two flunkies raping and torturing her, Allie, like they did to Revik?
Allie’s face doesn’t move.
Jon sees nothing in her, nothing.
Reaching over, he slaps her across the face. Hard.
Fuck! Revik says. Jon! I’ll fucking kill you…
Revik stops, mid-sentence, staring down at where she grips Jon’s wrist in her fingers.
Jon’s hit is a Barrier slap––not a real hand, not a real face––but her grip is like iron. He can’t withdraw his arm from it. The not-Allie stares up at him, and the fury he sees in her, the hatred that shines there briefly, sings through his blood like music.
Fuck you! he screams. Fuck you, Allie!
Jon, Revik warns, his voice holding more pain that time. Jon, stop. Please––
Jon doesn’t care.
You want to blame me? Jerking his hand free, he grips her by the shoulders, shaking her, trying to hurt her, to reach her, even where Revik holds her firmly against his chest. You want to blame Cass? Revik? Me? So do it! Just come back here and do it! Stop hiding here in la-la land, and just do what you came here to do––
Jon isn’t finished.
He wants to yell at her more, to scream into her face, call her a coward––hit her until she answers. Before he can, her arm reaches back. She moves so fast he barely tracks the motion, can’t make sense of what she’s doing…
…and she punches him, right in the face.
8
FLESH AND BLOOD
JON’S EYES SNAPPED open.
The change happened faster than his mind could comprehend.
He could only lay there, feeling dizzy, desolate, painfully raw.
His body sprawled in a red leather recliner. He panted, head still throbbing from the blow he’d gotten from that Barrier Allie in her ocean paradise.
He could only grip the armrests at first, fighting to breathe, to control the sickness he felt.
He looked up then, and saw Wreg over him, gripping his arm, his eyes holding a sharp panic. It hit Jon how afraid the other male looked, but Jon couldn’t handle that either, because as soon as he thought it, as soon as he let the emotion in, a dense wave of pain completely blanked out his mind.
He fought to move out from under Wreg’s hands, writhing to get away from him, but the other man worked frantically over him, fighting to unhook straps while Illeg and Jorag helped on the other side.
As soon as Jon had an arm free, he shoved Wreg’s hand away from him. He did it almost before he knew he intended to; he felt the sharp pulse of hurt on the other seer as he did it.
Then Jon turned his head, staring at the man on the recliner next to him.
Revik stared back at him.
His clear eyes held so much light, Jon barely noticed the tears standing there.
It occurred to Jon then, what he’d done.
He felt the blood slide out of his face, his heart start to thud in his chest.
Inside that Barrier space, he hadn’t been able to make himself care what Revik thought. He hadn’t been able to make himself care about anything but getting Allie to answer him, to snap her out of whatever fugue state she’d retreated into.
But now, looking at Revik, it occurred to him for the first time that the Elaerian might actually kill him.
Others felt it, too.
Wreg slid his muscular form between the two of them, even as Revik struggled to free himself from his own straps, what still tied him to the chair.
Wreg held up a tattooed hand.
Garensche and Loki grabbed hold of Revik on the other side. Revik elbowed them off without looking at them, even as Jorag vaulted past Jon and Wreg to help them, followed by Illeg once she’d finished untying Jon’s last leg.
“No!” Wreg shouted. He held his hand higher. “No… Illustrious Sword. Laoban… my friend. Calm yourself! Fucking calm down!”
Revik didn’t answer.
The four seers behind him fought to grab hold of his shoulders and arms. Jorag even grabbed him around the waist. Jon glimpsed Garensche fighting to get an arm around Revik’s throat, even as Garend joined Illeg in trying to capture his arms. He saw Jorag’s muscular arm slide around Revik’s neck a second later, succeeding where Garensche failed.
Jorag didn’t manage to get a lock on him before Revik moved, fast as a cat, and nearly as graceful, even now.
He lunged out of the chair, directly at Jon.
Jon saw two of the seers holding him let go of Revik’s arms. He heard Jorag curse. Balidor shouted something from the other room, where he’d likely been watching the proceedings through the one-way glass.
More seers shouted, and Wreg yelled louder.
“Stop! Illustrious Sword… stop!”
He saw Loki and Garend fight to get between them.
Revik looked only at Jon.
He regained his feet in a fighter’s crouch, moving so fast Jon couldn’t make sense of how he managed to get ahead of the others.
Jon felt a rush of electrical current, something that pained his ears and head, that throbbed there, inside his skull, that felt like it would knock him out cold.
Ringing filled his ears.
He watched Wreg try to wrestle Revik back, to shove at his chest. Wreg’s muscular palms slammed into Revik’s sternum, hard, even as other hands grabbed Jon’s arms, yanking him backwards, towards the door leading out of the room.
Confused, Jon jerked his eyes briefly back, over his shoulder. He glimpsed Yumi’s face, saw Loki with her now, along with Tenzi, a Tibetan-looking member of the Seven’s guard. Jon fought them, mindless, without being able to articulate to himself why.
He deserved this.
He deserved this…
He’d fucked up. Again. He’d taken Allie from Revik. Again.
Tears came to his eyes at the thought. They stung his eyes, running down his cheeks, but he didn’t look away from Revik’s face.
The whole thing happened around him in a kind of disjointed slow motion, but he knew, only now, that bare seconds had passed. In those seconds, everything went oddly silent, almost outside of Jon’s body altogether.
He struggled to care what they did to him, what Revik wanted to do.
He felt the fury on Revik, a kind of insanity broken by grief and pain, woven into that electrical current––
And then, Jon felt nothing.
Revik’s eyes rolled up.
Jon watched Revik fall.
He stared, uncomprehending, as Revik’s legs stopped working, as he struggled to move past whatever slowed him down. His entire six-and-a-half foot frame tensed, straining in every way imaginable––then it simply and abruptly crumpled. He dropped to the carpeted floor only a few yards from where Yumi and Loki managed to drag Jon.
Jon winced, seeing Revik hit his head on the arm of the red leather recliner. He saw Revik’s body jerk as the blow knocked his head and neck. The pain Jon felt as he watched it happen sucked the air from his lungs.
He cried out, hearing the anguish in his voice.
“No!” he screamed. “No! No! Gods… don’t…” He fought against Yumi and the others, even as he saw the two red-ended darts sticking out of Revik’s back. “Gods! Don’t hurt him, please! Hurt me! Hurt me!”
Wreg looked over at Jon’s words, his eyes turning abruptly bright.
Jon barely noticed.
It was too late. It was too late for anything.
Behind where Revik lay, Balidor was already lowering the rifle
.
“No!” Jon yelled, screaming it at Balidor that time, wanting to hurt the other seer, to hurt all of them for blaming Revik for this. He had done this. Jon. Him. This was his fault.
The whole fucking thing was his fault.
“No!” Jon yelled the word again, not even sure why that time, even as he burst into a sob.
It was the only word that made sense to him.
He crumpled there, on the floor. Wanting to die.
He wanted to die. He wanted it so badly. Wreg held him in his arms, shoving the others off, rocking him there, caressing his hair. Jon didn’t have the energy to push him away. He lay there, sobbing, curled up on the other seer’s lap.
He fought to breathe, gasping. He remembered the anger in Allie’s eyes, the way she stared at him, as if he hurt her by his very presence there, in her perfect, sunlit world.
As if Jon hurt her simply by reminding her he still existed.
It only hit him then, as Wreg continued to cradle him, murmuring to him in a language Jon didn’t know… that Allie was still alive.
She hadn’t left them, not entirely.
Allie was still here.
9
LITTLE SISTER
July 18, 2007
San Francisco, California
“JESUS, ALLIE…” HE opens the door wide, wearing only a white T-shirt and faded jeans.
His blond-streaked hair is back in a ponytail. His feet are bare, oddly white in the dim light of his foyer. When I see him standing there, I find myself fighting tears, the instant I stare up at his face.
He doesn’t speak, doesn’t waste time at all, but walks directly to me, reaching me in two steps, wrapping his strong, kung fu-toned arms around me. Those arms still surprise me, even when I just see them under his T-shirts and sleeveless gees.
I still see him in my mind the way I remember him when we were kids.
Maybe some part of me will never let go of those early images I carry of my brother, back when we spent every day together, back when I and my parents and most of our neighborhood friends still called him “Bug.”
Back then, Jon wore thick, coke-bottle glasses and ripped up converse sneakers he drew on obsessively with magic markers. He had arms Dad affectionately dubbed “spider legs,” and his hands and feet always looked too big for the rest of him.
He’d been one of those kids who spent most of his time with his nose in a book, at least when he wasn’t obsessing on his microscope. He used to drag me along with him for hours on those weekends, and I’d help him collect specimens to peer at through the magnifier. Most of those specimens came from Golden Gate Park, but some came from the sidewalk planters, the UC campus, Ocean Beach, even Alamo Square.
We looked at bugs, grass, snails, bird wings, feathers, flowers, pond and ocean water.
But Jon is different now.
He changed somewhere, somehow, while I wasn’t looking.
“Are you alone?” I’m clutching my ribs with my arms.
“Allie… what happened? Jesus, you look like you’re freezing to death.”
“The bike,” I say, shivering. “Are you alone?” I repeat stubbornly, knowing how terrible I must look, what the rain and wind and mud have done to my crappy, Mission District, fake antique dress, not to mention the make-up Mom spent all that time applying to my eyes and cheeks, that still lives in tatters on my face and hair.
Thinking about Mom, I squeeze my ribs tighter, feeling like I want to die.
No wonder Jaden didn’t want our families and friends along for this. No wonder he wanted to go up there just the two of us. No wonder he decided to take his motorcycle up there, instead of forking out money for a plane ticket, like I’d done.
How fitting that it rained most of the way back through Northern California.
All I can think about is how there’s no way I can face my mom now, not after all of her well-wishing and words of caution, her gentle attempts to get me to rethink what I was doing.
How can I explain any of it? There’s no way I can that won’t bring that look of grief and pity to her eyes, and likely anger at Jaden, maybe a hatred of Jaden, a prejudice against him she might not ever be able to get over.
Of course, Jon would never forgive Jaden, either.
“He didn’t show.” Jon pulls me firmly inside his flat, shutting the door behind me. I am shivering uncontrollably now, and he must see it, because he calls back over his shoulder. “Trey! Can you bring me a blanket? Or wait. One of the big towels. The blue one.”
I feel my heart crumple. “Shit. You have company.”
“I won’t in a minute,” Jon says firmly.
He continues to rub my arms and shoulders with his bare hands, his hazel eyes following the other man as he walks down the hall from the other room, carrying a large, ridiculously fluffy, sky-blue towel.
“What’s going on?” Trey says, glancing nervously at me. He gives me a tentative smile. “What’s up, gorgeous? You look so… Elvira right now.”
Jon’s voice hardens. “You said you had to go. Right, Trey?”
The other man blinks, his eyes roughly blank. After a pause, he nods though, seeming to understand the expression on Jon’s face.
“Yes. Yes, of course.” Recovering, he smiles at me, but it’s strained that time. “Of course. It’s really good to see you, Allie dear.”
Leaning over, he kisses my cheek.
I let out a humorless snort. “Yeah. Right.”
Winking, Trey gives me another devilish grin.
He’s a hot guy, different from Jon in that he knows it, with his dark blue eyes, wheat-blond hair and chiseled face and body. He’s one of the pretty people of the Castro, the type who now follow Jon around like puppies, although Jon still doesn’t seem to know quite what to do with that crowd still, much less how to deal with all the attention he receives.
I haven’t had the nerve to ask him if he’s enjoying all the sex he seems to get handed to him these days; I know he’s not exactly insecure about being gay, but he’s also not used to being quite so sexually successful, either.
In high school, things had been pretty different for Jon.
Right now, Trey hovers over Jon like Jon is his new favorite toy, one he’s afraid the other children will notice and try to steal from him when he’s not paying attention.
He doesn’t even seem that thrilled to have competition from me.
I look up at Jon as he takes the towel from his boyfriend’s hands without seeming to notice the attention there, unfolding it with a jerk and a snap before wrapping the thick material around me. Without looking away from my face, Jon begins rubbing my shoulders and arms again through the cloth.
“Not very ninja-like, bro,” I murmur to him, as Trey retreats into the other room to gather his things, including his designer jacket. “You don’t have to kick him out, you know. It’s fine. I can just take a shower or something, wait for you.”
Ignoring my words, Jon steers me into his living room, which has to be three times the size of my crappy apartment in the Fillmore. Bringing me over to the couch, Jon sits me down, plunking down next to me and only sparing a glance for Trey, who is already heading for the front door and the street outside.
I see the other man frown slightly as he gives Jon a once-over, looking at the two of us where we sit close together on Jon’s suede sectional couch.
Truthfully, I can’t make myself care about that right then, despite what I voiced to Jon only a few seconds earlier. It isn’t the first time me or Jon has chosen the needs of one another over the wants of a lover. It tends to be a bit of a standing gripe, actually, with me and Jon’s boyfriends, that Jon and I will put one another first, over any of them.
It’s a gripe of Jaden’s, too.
Maybe it’s especially a gripe for Jaden.
“He didn’t show,” Jon repeats, his voice harder after the door clicks shut behind Trey.
I shake my head, feeling my chest clench. “He showed.”
Jon catches hold of m
y left hand, holding up my fingers. “You aren’t wearing a ring. So either he didn’t show, or that was the quickest, quickie-divorce in history, Al.”
“Yeah. Well. We decided to wait.”
“You decided this?” Jon says, his voice pointed.
I exhale, fighting to think, to remember how the conversation went exactly with Jaden in front of that chapel in downtown Portland. Remembering the look in his eyes, the way he acted as soon as he showed up in the green park next to the chapel itself, I shake my head.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I really don’t, Jon.”
“So he spent all that time talking you into this,” Jon says, his voice holding that denser edge. “Weeks and weeks. Months. Got you to agree to marry him. Got you to buy the rings, the dress, the plane ticket, the hotel room, whatever… to blow off your family, not invite any of your friends. He does all that, just so he can back out at the last minute? What, was he done proving to himself he could get you to do it?” Jon’s hazel eyes spark with a deeper fury. “Did you even make it to that fucking Elvis place he wanted you to go to, Al?”
I nod, feeling a pall of something like humiliation wash over me.
“Outside of it anyway,” I mumble.
Wondering suddenly why I’ve come here, why I went out of my way to ruin Jon’s night, too, without giving him so much as a warning call or a head’s up, I shiver inside the towel. My whole body feels frozen from the nine-hour trip on the back of Jaden’s bike. I feel cold beyond where I’ll ever be warm again, colder than I’ve ever felt in my life.
Jon seems to sense this, somehow.
Instead of lecturing me more, he rubs my arms and back, rubs my hair under the towel, using it to soak up the water that still drips down onto my shoulders. I relax into the motion, but it doesn’t really help.
I feel like nothing will help after this.
Whatever ups and downs Jaden and I have been through over the past few months, somehow this feels different from all of those. I don’t even want to go back to Jaden’s place on Fulton Street by the park. I don’t want to face him, to pretend this didn’t happen. I don’t know how to pick up the pieces of our shared life together.
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