War_Apocalypse

by JC Andrijeski

  I DIDN’T NECESSARILY feel good about managing my husband. I mentally skirted around another word I could have used besides “managing”––a word that started with the same three letters and sounded a lot worse in my mind.

  He’d shouted that word at me, though. He’d spoken and shouted it more than once over the past few days.

  Hell, I was pretty sure he’d done it in this conversation.

  Even as I thought it, he said it again.

  “When the hell did you get so goddamned manipulative?” he growled. He never let go of me, though; his fingers only tightened in my hair, right before he let out a heavier sound, losing control over his light as he rocked against my mouth. “Fuck. Wife. What the hell are you doing to me?”

  Do you want me to stop?

  “No… gaos. You have your fucking mouth on me. I don’t want you to stop.”

  When I kept going, his voice got deeper, harder.

  “What do you want?” he said, a half-gasp. “What do you want from me?”

  That nearly made me laugh. Not in a particularly funny way, though.

  He knew what I wanted. He knew exactly what I wanted.

  I wanted him to tell me what the hell was going on with him.

  Even asking the question at this point was turning into some bizarre form of masochism on my part, though. Not only would he not tell me what was bothering him, but he had a tendency to turn it around on me and accuse me of lying to him, of plotting with Balidor, Jorag, Chandre Vikram, Wreg, Jon and whoever else to work around him, to put me in the cell with Ditrini, to put myself in danger, to prevent him from taking me out of the hotel.

  “I should leave with you,” he muttered, even now. “Fuck the rest of them. Would you go with me, Allie? Would you? If I really asked?”

  Not if you won’t tell me why, I sent, exasperated. Why do you want to go, Revik? Why in the gods would you think we’d be safer somewhere else, on our own? Instead of with everyone who cares about us?

  He wouldn’t answer that, either.

  The arguments got ridiculous at times, but, oddly, he never really seemed angry at me, and I struggled to stay angry at him.

  Whatever was going on with him, it made him act less angry and more worried, paranoid, hyper-militaristic and hyper-protective. When it came to the personal side of things between us, he didn’t get angry, either; he got defensive, accusatory, even aggressive.

  But not angry.

  Then he’d lose control of his light, start threatening to take me out of the hotel again, and most of the time I’d end up massaging him through his clothes, giving him head, or fucking him to calm him down. He let me, even as he complained I was manipulating him, controlling him like some kind of animal, using “that Lao Hu bullshit” to do it.

  I don’t know if his reasons for letting me do it were the same reasons I did it––namely, that he was an emotional, volatile, hyper-protective mess, and I wasn’t sure how else to calm him down––or if he simply couldn’t say no to me right now.

  No one would tell me what was wrong with him.

  Not just Revik––any of them.

  I knew at least some of the seers in the hotel knew more than they were saying, but they wouldn’t tell me jack shit, even when I flat-out ordered them to.

  I knew he’d talked to Tarsi, too, but I didn’t know about what, and now she wouldn’t see me, either. I’d requested multiple audiences with her, giving her a dozen different times, and she’d refused every one. I knew damned well she knew why I wanted to see her. I couldn’t exactly blame her for not wanting to get in the middle of things with me and Revik, but honestly, the way he’d been acting, I was ready to bust down her door.

  Balidor counseled patience. He claimed Revik would tell me soon, that he was just being overly cautious about whatever it was. He also told me that, ironically, Revik was trying to calm down before he brought it to me.

  Wreg, as usual, was less diplomatic. He told me Revik was being a “punk,” and counseled me to read him while he slept.

  I’m embarrassed to admit, I tried.

  He woke up, and we ended up having sex again––loudly, hard, and for about four hours. Needless to say, we hadn’t been sleeping much, either. I think the last time we’d had this much sex was at the cabin… and we were about as rational now as we had been back then.

  I wrapped my arms around his rear and lower back, and he let out another groan, right before he came, his fingers still fisted in my hair. I felt his reaction to me pulling on him with my light, the pain I threaded through his as I took him deeper.

  Frustration slid through him, jealousy, even as it turned him on. I felt his wonder that I could take him so deep now, essentially letting him fuck my mouth, and then his jealousy returned in a harder surge. He remembered the seers who could probably feel us on the other side of that door, and his pain worsened all over again, even as his frustration with me sharpened.

  “We’re turning into fucking exhibitionists,” he growled, fighting to catch his breath. “You’re turning me into one. You know damned well I won’t say no to this…”

  I paused long enough to laugh, without taking my mouth off him.

  Pot. Kettle, husband.

  His pain worsened, right before he caught hold of my hair, thrusting into me a last few times. His orgasm was winding down though, causing his fingers to loosen.

  When I stopped for real, looking up, I saw him glancing around the small storage room where I’d dragged him after he started arguing with me loudly in front of Balidor, Jon, Wreg, Chandre, Vikram and a handful of others––for like the fourth time that week. Once his arguments turned personal, once his light slipped out of his control, I didn’t have much choice.

  “Gaos, they must have felt that,” he muttered again.

  “They’re probably relieved,” I grunted, regaining my feet as I wiped my mouth. “I think you seriously scared the shit out of Vikram in there… even ‘Dori looked nervous.”

  He turned, looking at me, his eyes still glowing in the dim light of the room. “Are you planning on doing this still? Going in there?”

  I rolled my eyes, seer-fashion, walking up to him as he began fastening the front of his pants. “Don’t start again, Revik… please.” I reached for his shirt, fastening up the catches while he finished with his pants. “They don’t even have him addicted yet. ‘Dori doesn’t want me going in until they’ve got Ditrini to a point where he’s completely dependent on them, and will basically do anything they ask. It’ll be completely safe.”

  “Bullshit,” Revik growled, glaring at me. “I’m not letting you go in there again.”

  “Calm down.”

  “Fuck you with the ‘calm down’ crap! I mean it, Allie!”

  I pushed at his chest, giving him a half-humorous look. “Is this your way of asking for another blow job?”

  “Fuck the blow job, too. Next time I’m bending you over this table.” Heat came off his light as he said it, although his expression remained hard. “I might just use my belt on you first, come to think of it… since you aren’t fucking listening to a word I say anymore.”

  I smacked his hand when he tried to take over with the buttons, and he let me, leaning back on that same table with a grunt and an annoyed exhale.

  “Why the hell won’t you do this for me?” he grumbled. “Just stay away from Ditrini, Alyson. It’s one fucking thing––”

  I cut him off, exasperated.

  “It’s not one thing,” I said, still working on his shirt. “It’s everything lately, Revik. You don’t want me involved in looking for Terian. Or for Cass. You won’t even let me supply imprints for Cass––and I’ve known her my whole life. You don’t want me involved in looking for Shadow, or helping them source who he might be. You don’t want me involved with Ditrini. You don’t want me looking at the network design at the château. You don’t want me talking to the Lao Hu. You don’t want me going to the roof to help Wreg with the construct. You don’t want me––”

 
; “So just take it easy for a change, goddamn it! Give orders! Isn’t that enough?”

  “Why?” I stared up at him, frowning, as I finished with his shirt. “Why am I suddenly being put on this forced vacation? Is it because of the problems with my sight? I thought you said that definitely wasn’t a permanent problem? That I didn’t have anything to worry about with that, that it would come back on its own? Or were you lying about that, too?”

  He shook his head, clicking. “I wasn’t lying.”

  “Just about the cause of it.”

  When he looked up, frowning at me, I couldn’t help glancing down, noticing the way he looked as he leaned there, his long legs sprawled, sweat sticking his shirt to his increasingly muscular chest and his black hair to parts of his neck. Whatever his hormonal issues lately, he definitely wasn’t the only one suffering from them, unfortunately.

  He must have caught my stare, or maybe saw something in my light.

  “If you want to fuck for real, I’m taking you upstairs,” he grunted. “And I wasn’t totally kidding with the belt.”

  Combing his fingers through his hair, he exhaled again.

  “Can we stop talking about this?” he said. “Everything is fine. I just want you to keep a low profile for a while. Is that so hard to do?” He gestured expansively with one hand, his light exuding frustration. “Gaos. You have a hotel full of people to do things for you. Why the hell won’t you just play leader and stay the fuck off the front lines for a change?”

  “The Ditrini thing is one area where I can actually help while keeping a low profile,” I said, keeping my voice as patient as I could. “It’s not the front lines. It’s not even close to the front lines.” When he clicked at me in irritation, I cut him off. “I’m trying to compromise with you, husband, but you won’t let me compromise. You’re trying to control everything I do. No amount of my staying out of live military and infiltration ops seems to be enough for you. Do you want me to lock myself in a cage so you can post guards 24/7?”

  He aimed a level stare at me.

  Seeing his expression, even as his light grew more heated, I laughed.

  “Jesus. Now I’m giving you ideas.”

  “I wouldn’t be totally adverse to that,” he said.

  “Clearly.”

  Shaking my head and clicking at him, I looked down at my own clothes. Frowning, I rearranged the long skirt around my hips, tugging at the loose blouse to make sure it covered everything it was supposed to. Feeling another pulse of heat off Revik as he watched me, I looked up with a sigh.

  Walking over to him, I slid my body between his sprawled legs, tugging on the collar of his shirt with both hands.

  “Just tell me what’s going on with you. Please.” At his immovable look, I sighed again. “Maybe I need to start withholding sex. Giving you what you want in that area doesn’t seem to be helping with whatever this is.”

  “It’s helping,” he said, gruff, glancing down at my body. “Believe me… it’s helping.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Right. Sure, it is.”

  His eyes flickered up, even as his mouth hardened.

  “Why do you even want to talk to Ditrini?” he said. “I thought you never wanted to talk to him again. You said you never wanted to see him again… now all of a sudden, you’re Balidor’s interrogation buddy? For the piece of shit who raped you for months on end?”

  I frowned, but only shrugged, still holding his shirt.

  “Why are you so against it?” I said. “Who cares at this point? Balidor says in a few weeks, Ditrini won’t be a threat to anyone. Likely ever again.” When I saw Revik wince, my frown deepened. “Is it the wires? Are you really so dead set against using those on him?”

  “I don’t like wires, Allie. I told you that. Ditrini has nothing to do with it.”

  I bit my lip, nodding.

  I knew he didn’t like them. I’d known that as far back as on the ship to Alaska, where he’d once given me an unprompted, twenty or so minute lecture on the subject for no reason I could discern at the time. Mostly, he’d told me to never, ever, under any circumstances try wires myself, or trust any seer who was on them, especially an addict.

  Balidor did ask Revik’s opinion prior to starting Ditrini on wires.

  The day after I’d questioned Ditrini, Revik woke me up to take a shower with him and told me Balidor contacted him, asking what he thought of that approach. Balidor wanted everyone in our inner circle to weigh in, since apparently he was worried he might not be approaching the thing with Ditrini objectively, either.

  The decision was more or less unanimous to go with the wires.

  Balidor voted for it. So did I. Jon, Wreg, Chandre, Vikram, Declan, Chinja and even Tarsi voted for it, too. In fact, the “less” part was really just Revik.

  He’d been the lone dissenting voice.

  I think he’d hoped to convince me to dissent too, but Balidor made a compelling case, and I was worried about a possible attack on the hotel at that point. In Balidor’s mind, we only had two real options: either we put Ditrini on wires, or we kill him. He believed, adamantly, that the Lao Hu infiltrator was too dangerous to keep alive, at least in his current form.

  I was still worried about the timeline around a possible assault on the hotel, but Balidor assured me they would work as fast as they could.

  The problem was, they were working against some hard limits.

  According to Balidor, Vikram and the other techs, pushing a wire addiction on a seer had to happen in stages, or they risked turning the seer into a complete vegetable. If we wanted to get any actual information out of Ditrini, we had to do it like this, jacking the wires to the highest “safe” setting and monitoring the effects to make sure we didn’t cross that line.

  Depending on the subject, the process could take anywhere from two to six weeks.

  Generally, it took around four.

  The more we tried to speed up that process, the closer we got to that hard, red line of total brain function collapse.

  Of course, you could create addictions much faster. You could even blow out a seer’s aleimi and mind entirely in one go––meaning over a period of a few hours––but, according to Revik, if we did that, we might as well just put a bullet in Ditrini’s brain.

  Whatever our arguments about ethics and the use of wires on fellow seers, no one doubted the efficacy of wires in breaking Ditrini’s mind. Everyone agreed they would work, including Revik. Unlike with drugs, seers couldn’t build up a resistance to wires; repeated exposure broke down their aleimi more, making them more susceptible to the effects, not less.

  Once we had Ditrini thoroughly addicted, Balidor thought I should be the one to talk to him. After hearing my assessment of Ditrini’s views of me, and seeing our one and only interview together, Balidor wanted to name me primary interrogator.

  Revik, of course, hated that idea.

  That’s when he first accused me and Balidor of deliberately ignoring his wishes, and ganging up on him in a matter that affected him not only professionally, but personally.

  Revik’s voice rose.

  “I guess you weren’t fucking around, when you said you’d be taking over command,” he growled. “I’m not sure if I should be impressed… or if I should be looking up the laws on spousal rights in the goddamned seer codes.”

  I looked up, and saw his eyes glowing faintly at me again.

  Making a frustrated noise when I realized he’d been listening to me think about all of that, I only shook my head.

  “I thought this is what you wanted,” I said. “Wasn’t that what you told me to do? Take charge? Stop sneaking around and just tell all of you what I wanted? Those were your words, right? Or is my seer memory failing me now, too?”

  “I didn’t think that meant you’d cut me out of any decision that affects both of us.”

  “Ditrini doesn’t affect both of us.”

  “The hell he doesn’t.”

  “Only in your addled mind.”

  “Allie,”
he growled. “He’s still a risk to you… and to me… whether you want to admit that to yourself or not. If this is your way of pretending you have some unassailable power over him, that you’ve ‘defeated’ him after what he did to you, then you need to check your trauma at the door. You’re still connected to the son of a bitch. You’re still light-bonded to him… and to his infiltration team. How is this not going to make that worse?”

  Clicking at him in annoyance, I swallowed back another retort, not wanting to escalate the argument further. Still frowning, I aimed a thumb towards the supply room door.

  “Are we going back out there?” I said. “They’re still having a meeting next door, you know. Can you behave? Or should we go upstairs and talk for a while, first?”

  “Talk?” He grunted, his hands still planted on the table. “You mean fuck.”

  “Either,” I said. “Both.”

  He grunted again. “Bullshit. You don’t want to talk. You want to fuck. You know damned well that’s what we’d do if we go up there.”

  “Either,” I repeated, my voice edging into impatience. “Both.”

  “Can I hit you with the strap?”

  Staring at him, I let out a surprised laugh. “What?” When his expression didn’t move, I clicked at him again, humorously that time. “Jesus. You’re serious?”

  “Dead fucking serious.” Still gauging my expression, he kept his own immovable when he added, “I won’t lose control. I won’t go overboard. I promise.”

  I laughed for real. “Sure you won’t.”

  “I won’t.” His voice and eyes remained utterly without humor, but his light exuded a hotter coil. “I mean it, Allie. You can trust me with this. I want to hit you, then fuck… then maybe hit you somewhere else and fuck again. I’ll be careful. And we’ll use safe words. Something you’re unlikely to say spontaneously, like… ‘I trust you, Revik.’”

  Folding my arms, I lifted an eyebrow. “I thought we were going to wait on all that?”

  His eyes remained motionless on mine.

  After a pause where I didn’t speak or flinch either, he shrugged.

  Frowning, now mostly in thought, I continued to study his light, including the pale glow in his eyes. “So you want to blow off the strategy meeting totally? Again?”