Allie's War Season Four (198 page)

Both things came through strong enough that they cut my breath, and caused me to cling to him even tighter. The pain only worsened in that pause, until eventually I had to back away.

“Okay,” he said, sighing. He loosened his hold on me. “Okay, wife.”

He kissed my hand again, and I felt another shiver of pain.

“Okay,” he said again, smiling at me.

Funnily enough, that time, I think he was trying to reassure me.

About my own whacky, semi-reliable visions, that is.

I didn’t bother to answer in words, but followed the motion of his hands and legs as he turned with me, then began walking both of us towards the door. He never once let go of me as we made our way out into the pre-sunset street.

He never let go of my body or light, not even for an instant.

TERIAN DIDN’T TAKE us back to the Burj Khalifa, like I thought he would.

I saw it through the window in the distance, but we drove past it, and directly towards the Gulf instead, and the densest part of the walled shields that surrounded the city.

I found myself conscious of the OBE fields that stood with those, making this an exit we would never breach, no matter how we tried to pull it off.

We were now about as far from any true exit as we could possibly be.

I tried to keep my worry around that point out of my light, even as the lights of the ships and smaller recreational boats grew nearer.

We ended up at The Waterfront, an exclusive area of man-made land, connected by an elaborate series of canals that wound around a curved jetty shaped as a crescent moon.

I remembered it from the planning sessions.

From the air, Revik told me––while we pored over maps during the strategy meetings back on the carrier––this segment of the city could be seen as the crescent moon and star, visible all the way from space. Loki explained that it depicted a human symbol of Islam that used to be used on the old flags and artwork for this part of the world.

Loki showed me he still wore the same symbol on the inside of his arm in black seer’s ink... the same arm where he wore the sword and sun symbol on the outside, and as part of the same armband. I didn’t know Loki very well, so I never asked him about it beyond that. However, Wreg told me that before Loki joined the rebels under Salinse, he’d fought in protracted wars in Afghanistan and Iran, some of which went on for decades. Maybe even centuries.

I couldn’t help being curious about that, and, more to the point, curious about how Gina was coping with some of that stuff as she learned about her new boyfriend. Being involved with a seer so much older than her was probably going to be weird enough, but Loki wasn’t exactly your run-of-the-mill seer, either.

If I had to guess, telling his new girlfriend that he’d once belonged to a group of international terrorist seers plotting to take down the human race under Revik probably wasn’t high on Loki’s list of confessions, either.

And yeah, if it were me, I’d probably ease Gina into those details, too.

Whatever his exact background or relationship to this region, Loki had been really helpful in planning this op, and not only in terms of the layout of Dubai, where he’d also spent considerable time. He’d been helpful in educating most of us in the bare bones of the history and culture of the region more generally.

From what Dalejem and Stanley said, Loki’s basic information on Dubai hadn’t changed all that much, either, even though most of it came from the pre-Shadow era. Security was more intense, of course, and some of the neighborhoods had been expanded and even cleaned up and made more upscale in some cases, but the layout of the city remained more or less intact.

The Waterfront had always been at the top of the food chain, ever since it had been built in the late 1990s. Like a lot of things built in Dubai during that decade, they created the whole neighborhood more or less out of thin air, shipping in dirt and other landfill to create land, but also designing buildings that floated. The whole thing was connected by an elaborate series of floating bridges, canals and even land-bridges, but the floating aspect of this segment of Dubai City was nothing like the floating segments of Bangkok I remembered, or even those of Macau.

In Dubai, those buildings reached to the stars, the highest on The Waterfront itself being over fifty stories tall. The curved crescent of land mass was now home to some of the most luxurious hotels and houses ever built, anywhere in the world.

The sheer opulence around what it meant to be rich here still kind of blew my mind. And yeah, I grew up in San Francisco, which had some pretty obscene wealth of its own, although it hadn’t been shared by most of the people I’d known there.

It made sense that Terian would be taking us out here.

The location still made me nervous, but in a perverse kind of way, it also made sense. I could feel Revik’s light gearing up next to mine as he held my hand. We now sat crammed into the back of one of the four limousines that Terian sent to the nightclub to pick us up.

Clearly, Terian had been aware Revik had more people outside that club than in it.

Terian also made it clear that all of those people couldn’t go with us to look at the List seers. Revik reluctantly agreed, then sent two of those limousines filled to the brim with our infiltrators to an exit point on the other end of the city.

That left a relatively small group of us accompanying Terian to The Waterfront.

Me, Revik. Anale, Chinja, Delek, Jax, Holo, Poresh, Stanley, Surli and Dalejem. Two other Children of the Bridge seers joined us, as well. I didn’t know them, but I recognized both of their faces. I knew their names were Baleur and Mansk.

I couldn’t help but feel relieved that Kat had elected to ride in one of the other ones.

I’d already given Revik the short version, in terms of running into her during that presale. I didn’t make the connection on Terian buying her until Revik reminded me.

“She’s on the List,” he murmured near my ear. “So was that male... the other seer Terry bought today. Loki verfied it.”

Feeling a mix of reactions go through my light, I only nodded.

Really, I had no room to complain. After all, two of my exes were on the Lists, too.

Revik heard that, well enough to grunt.

When I glanced up at him, he only gave me a grim smile.

I watched Terian himself, meaning the one with the auburn hair, from where he sat across from us on the facing bench seat, his gaze aimed towards the rear of the vehicle. His amber-colored eyes glowed strangely in the runner lights in the back of the car. I saw them looking at Dalejem more often than strictly necessary, who happened to be sitting next to him. I was still watching when his hand snaked out. He began massaging the leg of the male seer, exuding enough pain that I flinched, recoiling in reflex.

Dalejem jerked his leg away, shoving at Terian’s hand, but the other seer wouldn’t let go.

“Can I have him, Revi’?” Terian looked at Revik, even as Dalejem continued to try and pry Terian’s hand off his leg. “Please?”

“No,” Revik said, his voice cold. “Leave him alone, Terry.”

Terian released Dalejem at once.

I watched Dalejem glare at the auburn-haired seer, right before he turned that harder look on Revik. I knew it was beyond inappropriate, but when I looked at Terian right then, I almost wanted to laugh. The look of disappointment on his face was just so acute.

I didn’t laugh, of course, but I still had to suppress a smile.

“He’s hungry,” Terian complained, even as I thought it. “He’s really hungry, Revi’...”

“Leave him alone, Terry,” Revik repeated, his voice openly warning. “That wasn’t a request.”

Terian gestured an acquiescence with one hand, but I could feel off him that he was still disappointed, maybe even petulant about it. At the same time, he didn’t want to fight with Revik about it, either. He still wanted whatever he wanted from us, badly enough that he didn’t want to disobey Revik.

Even so, I watched him study Dalejem’s face and body through narrowed eyes, almost like he was drinking in whatever he felt coming off his light.

Dalejem himself looked pissed off, which I could understand.

He also glared at me, which I understood a lot less, right before he glared at Revik.

“Don’t do me any favors, brother,” he said, aiming that at Revik, too.

Revik’s jaw hardened, but he only shrugged with one hand, his eyes returning to the window. His light exuded indifference, despite the irritation I felt from him. “You can fuck him all you want later, Jem. But I’d rather if you didn’t do it in here.”

On Revik’s other side, Jax snickered a little.

That time, the anger I felt off Dalejem was almost a tangible force.

It was intense enough that I winced, shielding my light. Again, I looked up at Revik, wondering what the hell happened between the two of them while I was gone.

“Forget it, Allie,” Revik murmured, kissing my temple. “I’ll tell you later, okay? It’s nothing. I promise.”

When I glanced over though, Dalejem looked even more furious.

His eyes focused on Revik like he wanted to hit him. Or maybe I felt that in his light... or both, I’m honestly not sure. I couldn’t use my own light to scan him like I might have normally, but I couldn’t help thinking maybe that was for the best.

I was still staring at him, trying to figure out what his problem was, when Terian broke out in a happy chuckle, looking between the three of us like he was having the time of his life.

He pointed at Dalejem, as if about to say something, but Revik cut him off.

“Shut up, Terry,” he said, giving him a warning look. “I mean it.”

Terry grinned wider, but didn’t argue.

Instead, he leaned back on the leather seat, bouncing a little on his rear as he grinned and stared out the window. Watching him, I couldn’t help thinking he looked like was about ten years old. In human years, that is.

Rolling his eyes, Revik grunted, glancing down at me with what looked like a real smile that time. In the same set of seconds, however, as we met eyes, I found myself reminded of where we were, and the depth of the risks we were taking with this. Not only with our own lives. Lily’s too.

Revik must have felt some of that through my light, because his smile faded.

He leaned closer, kissing me on the mouth.

“Lily needs to be free too, wife,” he reminded me softly, putting his mouth by my ear after he ended the kiss. “We all do. You do, too.”

I nodded, feeling my throat tighten as I felt his words through my very skin, more intensely than I had while we talked about this same thing on the ship.

She did need to be free. We all did. But Lily, especially.

Which meant we needed Terian. More to the point: we needed Feigran.

Even as I thought it, the limousine began to slow.

Nerves coursed through me, right around the time I felt a denser pulse of worry leave my aleimi. I found myself reminded that we were deep inside the Dreng construct once again... even as I wondered why I felt the need to constantly remind myself of that fact.

It struck me that the main reason was that it was so easy to forget.

The very subtlety of that construct’s strands were what made me nervous.

The fact that it might be affecting us... especially Revik and some of the others who had spent too much time in that light... made me even more nervous.