Allie's War Season Four

ALLIE’S WAR SEASON FOUR

BOOKS 7-8

by

JC Andrijeski

Copyright © 2014 by JC Andrijeski

Published by White Sun Press

Cover Art & Design by Jennifer Munswami at

J.M. Rising Horse Creations

www.facebook.com/RisingHorseCreations

2015

Ebook Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please visit an official vendor for the work and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

SYNOPSIS

“…And lead them out of the darkness of that dying world.”

Books seven and eight in the gritty, unique, apocalyptic and metaphysical psychic romance series, Allie's War, featuring Allie Taylor and her antihero guide, Dehgoies Revik.

In
Season Four
, we see Revik having to go it alone for the first time, leading the armies of the Bridge without Allie as they are separated by Shadow and his new pet intermediary, War.

Allie stepping into a larger part of herself as a result of that separation affects both of them, as does Revik’s growth into the full-fledged military commander that Allie more than anything needs him to be.

Bridge: Allie's War Book Seven
- Revik finds himself leading the remnants of the Bridge’s army alone, hunting Shadow and War in the hopes of saving what remains of his family from a fate worse than death.

Prophet: Allie's War Book Eight -
Allie and Revik hunt down the Displacement List seers, trying to save them from Shadow, when a new player enters the scene and begins stealing those seers for their own purposes.

Series Summary

The Allie's War series is a psychic romance set in a unique, gritty version of Earth populated by a second race of psychic beings called Seers. Its heroine, Allie Taylor, was marked "The Bridge" from birth, born to be the leader of the Seer race and the bringer of the next stage in humanity's evolution. Unfortunately, to many Seers, that means the death of just about every human on the planet.

She is helped and hindered, awakened and impeded by her antihero partner, Dehgoies Revik, whose on-again-off-again relationship with the dark beings known as the Dreng may destroy them both.

The series takes place in a modern version of our world at the brink of apocalypse and a dystopian future. It spans centuries along with the lives of its main characters, the Seers, and the wars they fight with themselves and their human allies and enemies.

Praise for the Allie’s War Series

“Highly Recommend!” ~ Escape Into A Book

“Word of advice…remember to breathe!” ~ The Cabin Goddess

“The sexual tension is scorching...” ~ The Muses Circle

“[B]eware; you’ll immediately want to dive into the next installment.” ~
The Indie Bookshelf

BRIDGE

Allie’s War Book Seven

For my mom

Prologue

BETWEEN

“...And the lands between will swallow her for a time / Until she forgets herself, lost in death and drenching cold / In that place of ghosts / Only the one who carries half her soul / Can hold the light for her in the end...”

~ from “The Love Story,” Commentaries on the Final Days

I REMEMBER EVERYTHING now. Everything.

Every moment, every piece of my life. Every thread of the tapestry that eluded me all of those years, that consisted only of random, disparate acts...of reaction and fear and lack of agency. All of those connections. All of the resonances I glimpsed and missed. The moments in my life, powerful or not, that refused to add up into any kind of coherent whole.

I remember them all.

I remember, and I see the threads that lay between.

I see the image from here, that finely detailed painting that makes up my life, and it almost makes sense. It almost connects my mind to those parts of me that know why I came to this world, what I’m even doing here. It contains so much, this knowing, this image of life...but I also see how small it is, how interdependent and connected to all the rest.

The feeling behind that remains elusive, but the glimpses I catch in those silences cut my breath.

I feel so much there. I cannot express even a small part of that feeling. It contains so many shades, old and new, ancient and birthing. Timelessness lives there. Timelessness that is somehow beautiful in its very existence.

So much beauty. So much hope.

Those things live in distant glimmers of heart and light that promise to contain everything, the very meaning of life itself, and not just for me. For all of us. It is not something I can comprehend. Not even here, where my mind feels its most all-encompassing, its clearest and least shadowed by my own hang-ups and misconceptions and fears and longings.

Not even here can I understand even a fraction of the things that live in that light.

I want so much here.

Yet here, I need nothing.

I slide over mountains, valleys.

One valley. One perfect valley, so beautiful it makes me cry, or I fervently believe it would, if I could cry in this place. I believe it so strongly, that feeling blooms like a pain in my side, fighting against what body I have left. That valley grows larger before me, filled with white and gold light so that I scarcely see the lapping waves. Details etch in marbled cliff faces, each grain of sand so clear and glass-like, I feel a thousand worlds living in each smooth surface. They reflect the light of one another, merging yet separate, so beautiful and filled with so much meaning, more meaning than I can...

I know this place. I know it, but...

I can’t be here.

The part of me that can feel, can think, lingers out of reach of all those pieces of reality I would touch, if only I could.

Whatever leaves me here, it lets me see it.

It lets me feel the caress of those waves, the rough brush of sand on the bottoms of my feet and toes, the soft kiss of sunlight filled with presence and hope, like a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy, but it doesn’t let me
reach
it...not really.

As a few hundred years tick slowly by, without any sense of where or when, I watch that valley and ocean recede. The movement starts slow. After a few seconds (breaths? thoughts? grains of sand falling?) it rapidly accelerates...like a film rolled backwards through an antique projector. Smoke turns to fog, until everything I love flickers dimmer and more indistinct the faster it goes, the further it disappears into the distance.

I am left behind.

The grief tries to overwhelm me again, to annihilate me anew, finish me for good. It is too much, this grief. I can’t handle it...I can’t do anything but let it strangle and rip apart my insides, without even a body to house them. My heart hurts, my head hurts...my belly hurts and my intestines and my throat...yet there is nothing there of me, no way to house any of what I am in a form I could possibly recognize.

My heart and everything in the world feels deadened somehow, despite everything I feel on the other side. It’s as if someone locked me and everything I care about under glass. All that gets through is the image. I am preserved there, a glass vase. Empty...

Empty of him.

Here, I remember everything. Every single thing.

I can almost see him there, too, in the case next to me. A different glass cage, visible to me, but out of my reach, when I love him the most. When I need him the most. When I most need to feel his light, to let him feel mine. Maybe I really am dead. Maybe the end will come soon, and then I have only to...