Allie's War Season Four (172 page)

“It’s not only that,”
Revik told me softly in my ear.
“They took a lot out, Allie. Mostly stuff from her childhood.”

I frowned, but gave another bare nod to show that I’d heard.

I wondered what might happen to Cass if we pulled Terian into the mix.

Even as I thought it, I found myself speaking aloud.

“Terian contacted me,” I told her. “As in me, personally. Not Revik. In fact, he told me he’d waited for Revik to be gone. Why would he do that, Cassandra?”

Cass turned, staring at me, her dark eyes briefly widening.

It was a micro-expression, barely there before it was gone, but I saw the ripple in her light signature. My words definitely surprised her.

She turned that surprise into a mocking smile within a heartbeat.

“Looking for dating advice, Al?” She made her voice falsetto, reminiscent of 1950s-style advertising. “Oh, my!
What’s
a modern girl to do? So many eligible men, and so little means to choose between them!” She gave me another smirk. “Perhaps you should come up with some sort of criteria, Al? Or a system of incentive between them. Have them fight to the death. Or see which one of them gives better head.”

I frowned a little, but didn’t stop on it for long.

“What’s in Dubai, Cass?” I said.

“Sand,” she said, smiling at me again. “A fuck-ton of sand, Al... even more than you’ve got in your virtual memory walk here. And I happen to know from personal experience that you can buy shoes made of solid gold, if that’s your thing. Nowadays, you can probably buy a few cute Middle Eastern human males, too... put collars around their necks and take them for walks around the air conditioned malls... order them to suck off the cocks of passersby, if the mood strikes you.” She gave me a harder stare. “I hear
you
did that, Al. In Beijing. Is that true?”

I felt Revik flinch, somewhere in the other room.

I kept my expression smooth.

“Does Shadow want me to go to Dubai, Cass?”

She threw up her hands, smiling. “How would I know that, Al? I’m in
here...
remember? A bit out of the loop, these days, with the big boss.”

Watching her look at the water, I followed the patterns as the sensors tracked the surface of her aleimi. I knew Balidor had his people in here for weeks, looking for intel, anything she could tell them about Shadow’s plans, the layout of his cities, maps of his Barrier network structure and whatever else. They looked for things she knew consciously, and things she might know unconsciously, too. They hadn’t found much of either.

Revik explained that Shadow would have cut her out of the network as soon as she’d been taken captive, so she’d likely lost access before we even got her in the tank. Anything sensitive she might have known would have had all of the particulars changed, too.

So what in the gods did I hope to accomplish by this?

“In through the out door,” I muttered under my breath.

Cass turned, staring at me with narrowed eyes.

I found myself lost in the expression on her face.

For the barest second, it felt like I’d caught a glimpse of the person there, like some part of her flashed across the outer image, like the after-effect of a bright light that faded quickly back into darkness. Even as I stared at it, fighting to grasp hold of whatever I’d seen with some part of my mind and light, it was gone.

The wall fell back down over her expression. That jerky, off-kilter light resumed, which pushed me away just by the jarring, unnatural aggression of its rhythms.

Cass looked away from me, back at the water. I watched her, feeling my heart beat louder in my chest. I couldn’t help it, or evade my own reactions entirely.

She’d heard that before.

Which meant she’d heard Shadow talking about it. Or Terian.

She’d heard them talking about Revik. Using that exact phrase.

“What does that mean, Cass?” I said. “In through the out door?”

Turning her head, Cass smirked, thrusting out her chest as she arched her back, once more resting her weight on her palms. Her dark eyes flashed in the pre-sunset light.

“Can I just say... you win the prize for
most boring interrogation, ever,”
she said. “Seriously. Is this the best the Adhipan can come up with? You? Spouting a bunch of cryptic b.s.?” She lifted an eyebrow, her dark eyes growing colder, even as her voice grew sickeningly sweet, dripping with mock sympathy. “Oh... I’m sorry, Al. Is the view for you? I hear you’re seeing Yumi again. Did you come here for a good cry?”

I recognized the little-kid voice. Cass used it regularly back in the day, mostly to taunt women at parties, and later in bars.

Snorting, she shook her head, her eyes returning to the water.

“You should have asked Revik before you came in,” she grunted, leaning back on her hands. “Now there’s a guy who knows about torture. In fact... why don’t you bring him in here now? I’d
much
rather talk to him.” Still watching the horizon, and now a white sailboat floating under the bridge and into the bay, she let a smile play around the corners of her full mouth. “Of course, I’d much rather do more than talk, if you know what I mean... but then, you probably
do
know what I mean, don’t you, Al? Given that you have access to that boy’s cock pretty much twenty-four-seven now, I’m guessing.”

Cass turned her head, meeting my gaze levelly once more.

“Still making up for lost time, Al?” she said sweetly.

I returned the look, but didn’t answer.

I knew she’d go there again, too.

Even so, given the stuff going on in my light around Revik right then, she managed to distract me. More than that, it got me thinking about the bond, and the fact that everything felt different with me and Revik again, ever since Kali showed up.

But Kali wasn’t the issue. I knew that too, without knowing how I knew.

It was Terian.

Terian was right at the center of this somehow.

In through the out door...

I could almost
feel
it, damn it, well enough that it was maddening. Terian’s involvement in this, maybe his very light, was like a scent that came and went, never staying long enough for me to nail down what the hell it meant. He was at the center of this though. I was sure of it.

Or maybe he was just the most important thing right now.

Maybe the religious nuts were right, and it really was about the Four.

“Yeah,” Cass said, stretching her back. She thrust out her chest again, shaking her head so that her black, silky hair fell straight down her back. “You’ve got a talented guy there, Al... no question. He’s
really
fucking good with his hands... and with his mouth, as I recall. I know Terry thought so. He had him on his knees at the beginning of just about every session in those mountains. Sometimes he’d be on his knees for
hours,
Al. Kind of like you in Beijing...”

“Allie,”
Revik said, his voice rising in my ear.
“I think you should come out of there. You were on a good line with whatever you said to her just then. Her reactions spiked off the damned chart. But you’re losing her now. I think she’s done.”

“...And damn,” Cass said, giving me a slightly wider smile, turning to face me with those dead eyes. “The boy’s got a nice cock. I mean, you have to admit, Allie... that’s a really nice set of junk. Jon’s wasn’t half-bad, either. He’s actually pretty hung, for a worm... but I think he’s been sucking dick too long, Al.”

She stared out over the water, her eyes colder than the Pacific.

“He just couldn’t get the hang of the whole ‘female thing,’” she added in air quotes with one hand. Smiling at me wider, she shivered.

I felt pain on her, too. I honestly couldn’t tell if it was a put-on or not.

“But your guy, Revi’... damn,” she said. “Terian would even have him fuck me extended. Did he tell you that? I could tell he hated to do it, but he did it anyway. He just couldn’t
help
himself...”

Before I could block it, she flung images at me.

Not one image. Images. Plural.

Unfortunately, just like with her light patterns, the VR translated that in rote, too, as part of the program’s function. I got a glimpse of the visual, some sensory data, which got translated dutifully along with the rest... and yeah, more of that pain.

When she did it again, I blocked the VR translation, but not quite fast enough. I got a brief flicker of Jon that time, too... of Jon and Terian and Revik and Cass. I closed my eyes, fighting the sickness that rose in my throat. I cut out the virtual translation entirely at the third cluster she sent, but by then, I was clenching my jaw. I could just turn the damned thing off entirely, of course, but that kind of defeated the purpose of being in here at all.

“I even started to like it...” Cass added.

“Alyson...”
Revik said.
“Gods, baby... end this, please...”

“...Even when he had that gun to my head the other day,” Cass said, glancing at me again, her eyes assessing mine. “Even then, when he was all murderous and shit, I felt him turned on. He’s like a walking hard-on all the time, isn’t he?” She grinned at me, but it still didn’t touch her eyes. “Lucky you. That must be fun.”

Revik’s voice cut in.
“Allie... listen to me. This isn’t just your husband talking. Balidor agrees with me. So does Yumi. She’s toying with you. She’s getting off on it too much. And she’s done talking. You caught her off guard with that other thing, but it’s made her shut down even more now. The session’s over.”

He kept his voice calm, stripped of emotion, almost clinical.

Even so, I heard the edge there.

“...Did he ever tell you that Terian had both of them fuck me once? At the same time, I mean.” Cass smiled at me, that knowing look in her eyes. She flung more images at me, but I managed to keep it out that time, by clicking off the translation segment of the virtual program faster, so that it hit the construct walls of the tank. “...Your hubby and Jon. It was pretty out there, some of the stuff he wanted us to do. Terry always was a sick fuck, though. You knew that. And he liked your husband a
lot.
He liked getting him riled up about you...”

Something in her words made me frown that time.

Something besides the obvious, I mean.

As soon as I felt it, that was gone, too.

“You’re not going to get anything out of her like this,”
Revik said, his voice dropping to a growl.
“End this, Alyson. I mean it...”

“Is she right?”
I said through the subvocals, ignoring his words.
“Does Terian still have some kind of fixation on you, Revik? A sexual one, I mean?”

For a long-feeling moment, he didn’t answer.

Then, I felt his shield drop somewhat, even as I felt a denser flicker of emotion. He clicked his tongue, exuding impatience. I could almost see him where he stood in the other room, angry that I was bringing this up now.

Still, when he spoke, he was all business.

“Honestly? I doubt it. He’s a sadist, Allie. I wouldn’t read much into it beyond that.”

“But she’s telling the truth about what he did to you in that cell? Terian?”

I felt a harder flush of his anger.
“Yes,”
he said, blunt.

“But you don’t think that’s from some kind of fixation?”

“Are you confused about the ‘sadist’ part, wife?”

“What does Jon think?”
I asked, pushing aside his anger.

There was a longer pause, presumably because Revik either asked Jon, or called Jon on his transmitter... or because he was angry at me for even asking the question. It probably had some mixture of all three, but his response came out in favor of the former two. When Revik spoke next, his voice was grudging.

“He agrees with you,”
he said, gruff.
“Why the fuck does this matter, Allie?”

“I don’t know,”
I admitted.
“But it might.”

“You feel something?”

I nodded, but felt another sliver of doubt worming its way into my brain. Revik was right. Why was this important now? It was maddening that I didn’t know. It was even more maddening that not knowing did nothing to lessen the feeling.