Allie's War Season Four (155 page)

There was a silence.

Next to her, Vikram didn’t make a sound.

Neither did Loki, although he seemed more bewildered than anything now.

Then Dante’s mother burst out in an involuntary laugh.

As soon as she had, she clamped a hand over her mouth, as if horrified, but she couldn’t seem to stop laughing, either. All Dante could see was Loki’s shirt hanging open and his long, dark brown hair out of its usual clip for the first time in the eight or so months she’d known him. That, along with the unfastened top buttons of her mom’s black jeans was enough to have Dante livid, to the point where she really did consider calling Deklan.

When her mom started laughing harder, still looking at Dante’s face, her hazel eyes holding more guilt now, despite her seeming inability to stop, Vikram, who had apparently been suppressing the same, chuckled, too.

He stopped when Dante gave him a death stare, his eyes holding a faint apology along with the humor, but Dante saw the smile there anyway and only scowled at him.

Apart from Dante, only Loki did not laugh.

He sat on the bed, watching Dante’s mother as she clamped both hands over her mouth, trying to kill the last of her giggles, his expression still mostly bewildered.

18

CRACKED

THE CONVERSATIONS SEEMED to go on for hours.

I fought not to react to a lot of it. Mostly, I tried to calibrate my answers and demeanor to those of the others in our group, since I could tell I wasn’t really processing things “right,” at least not right then. I needed to get away from everyone else before I could think about any of this for real. I needed to just be alone, maybe stare at the water again for awhile and try to figure out what really made sense to me in all of this.

I mean, the words they spoke made sense.

Kali, and Uye, too, I had to assume, wanted to help us move most of our people off the ship, and set up a land-base somewhere. A number of different locations were tossed around, but we all agreed that if we went forward with something like that, then Revik and I and the rest of the team who intended to penetrate Dubai couldn’t know the details, at least not yet.

Apparently Kali had been dreaming of mushroom clouds, too, because she seemed anxious to see this happen soon...and to see the Dubai op happen soon, too.

I found myself remembering the anxiousness of Terian, too, in all of that, and while I still didn’t know if I could believe anything he’d said, or how I’d felt while he’d said it, a part of me couldn’t help finding parallels with the vibe I got off Kali as she talked to my leadership team.

Also, there was definitely something different about her light.

Wreg commented on it, too, and even Jon, the one time he tried to pull me aside to figure out what was going on with me.

By then, even Revik was giving me some amount of space, although he never wandered far, at least not until he had to return to the tank when his clock ran down again.

Until that time, though, I often found his eyes on me, as if measuring me, weighing my light. And yeah, I couldn’t really blame him.

The truth was, I still felt pretty unmoored in all of this.

Not like I was being pushed or pressured or anything, but more like circumstances were unfolding faster than my rational mind could keep up.

At the end of the day, though, I could feel the truth in Kali’s words.

I knew she was right. We needed to get our people off of the carrier.

We needed to do it soon.

I couldn’t see ahead, into the future...at least not the way that she could...but I could feel this thing, whatever it was. I could almost see it when I closed my eyes, like clouds massing on the horizon. But the idea of handing my kid over to these people, who were strangers to me still, at least to my rational mind, was enough to bring a panic to my light so intense that I almost couldn’t think past it. I knew that technically, these were Lily’s grandparents. I believed they were who they said they were, and probably would have, even without Revik, Balidor and even Tarsi there to back her story up.

It almost didn’t matter to me, though.

The idea of losing Lily again, so soon after we’d finally gotten her back, felt like being asked to hack off one of my own limbs. They could tell me it was temporary all they wanted, but some part of me hated the idea more than I could express...and even hated anyone who wanted to reassure me that it was okay.

I knew it was probably for the best, that I’d be keeping her safe, that it was only temporary.

I
knew
all of that...I just didn’t give a shit.

So I didn’t say a lot, by the end of that first day of talks.

By the time we’d returned to the ship, with plans to meet with Kali and Uye and the rest of them again the next day, I just wanted to sleep.

Revik had been forced to return to the ship long before me, of course...in fact, by the time I’d finally wrapped things up with the Children of the Bridge, he’d been back there for over three hours, so past the two-hour shut-in period he got stuck with as part of the deal. I suspected that frustrated him somewhat, but he was pretty quiet towards the end of those talks, too, so maybe he was having his own issues around Lily and whatever else.

He definitely still seemed to have some issues with Kali, although I tried to pretend I didn’t notice that...just like I tried to pretend that Dalejem wasn’t still staring at the two of us, too.

Anyway, by the time I returned to our room in the four-quadrant tank, Revik wasn’t there anymore. Instead, I found a note in his handwriting on the night table, saying he’d gone to talk to Yumi.

I didn’t bother to wonder about that, either.

I knew he’d been going to see her ever since we’d talked about it that day.

Anyway, at that point, I almost wondered if I should go see Yumi myself. When he was finished, I mean.

I was still thinking about that when I fell asleep on top of the bed with my clothes on. The only thing I managed to pull off before I passed out were my boots.

I WOKE UP to hands on me, light pulling at mine, his fingers sliding under my shirt to caress my skin. When I turned over from where I’d been lying on my side, facing one of the walls of the tank, it was still dark. His eyes were glowing faintly, though, enough that I could see the bare edges of his face. He kissed me before I could ask him anything, and his light was softer than I’d felt it in weeks...months maybe.

By comparison, I felt hard and closed and covered in edges.

I fought to open to him in return, to be there with him, and he kissed me again, blowing warmth over my light, caressing my back and sides with his fingers, nuzzling my face.

The sheer softness of him started to melt something in me.

I started to fall into him, into his light, even as I wrapped my arm around his back...

And he winced.

I felt it, felt the shock of pain in his light...sharply enough that I pulled back.

Confused, I looked up at him.

My heart started beating harder in my chest, long before my mind could turn over the new information. My light sparked, even as I met his gaze.

“What’s wrong with your back?” I said.

“Nothing.” He shook his head even as he kissed my cheek, pausing to press his briefly against mine. Pain slid through his aleimi, pulling at me, even as he lowered his face, kissing my neck, putting light in his tongue. “Allie...relax. Just let me be here for you. Please.” He kissed me again, slower that time, his voice affectionate, warm, full of light. “Did you take a shower? I can taste salt on you still...” he murmured.

But my confusion only worsened.

I started to reach for his back again, but he caught hold of my wrist, stopping me.

“Allie,” he said. “It’s fine.”

“But what happened to you?” I said. “What’s wrong with your back?”

He just looked down at me for a second, as if hesitating. Then he exhaled, letting his weight fall to his side, so that he was lying next to me.

“You went to Yumi, right?” I said. Turning my head, I looked at the timepiece shining faintly from the edge of his organic desk. “...Were you with Yumi all this time?”

Clicking softly, he resettled his body deeper into the bed. Combing his fingers through his hair, he sighed again, as if resigning himself to dealing with me.

Somewhere in that pause, the light in his eyes dimmed slightly, too, so that I could only just see him now, and mostly via the pale, white-green lights that shone from the bare edges of the floor, mostly so we wouldn’t bang into things if one us had to get up and use the bathroom in the middle of the night. In all of that, he was only a dark shape, his black hair only slightly blacker than his skin.

“Do you really want to talk about this now?” he said.

I stared at him, at where his face was, feeling that pain in my chest worsen.

“Talk about what?” I said. “What are we talking about?”

“Allie...” He reached for me, taking my hand. Threading our fingers, he blew warm light at me, along with another pulse of pain. I felt deeper emotions there, too...grief, something that felt like worry, maybe even guilt, a denser caution that edged into fear. “Allie, please. Today couldn’t have been easy for you. Please...let me try to help you with it. Even if you’re mad at me about Dalejem still...or for not telling you I’d met Kali and your father all those years ago...you need to open your light, darling. Let me be with you...please. That’s all I want. I want to be the one to help you for a change. Like you do for me...”

I fought to absorb his words, to even make sense of them.

“But where were you?” I said finally. “Where did you go?”

Releasing my hand, he rolled to his back.

I saw him wince again as he did it.

Or maybe I just felt it, in my light.

“Allie,” he said. “Please.”

“Just tell me,” I said.

Clicking softly, he shook his head, but not in a no. I felt resignation on him again, but not guilt, not that time. More, I got the feeling like he thought he was being deflected, that I was purposefully distracting him, avoiding what he’d said to me.

But was I deflecting? I honestly couldn’t tell.

All I knew was that the longer he lay there, not speaking, the more that pain in my chest grew. It began to spread, too, seeping lower and deeper, crawling into my belly until I felt sick, until my thoughts stopped making all that much sense to me.