Allie's War Season Four (203 page)

That Children of the Bridge seer, Dalejem, stood on his other side, not far from Anale and Delek and two others Chandre only knew in passing. Jax and Chinja stood closest to the Rook, and Surli and Stanley stood on the other side of the Bridge and the Sword, presumably to cover them from behind. Others positioned themselves further back, where Chandre couldn’t see them very well, but she knew how many had come out here, so she could more or less guess where they stood.

Chandre didn’t know how many of them were still armed. To err on the side of caution, she had to assume none.

Therefore, when she swung the rifle back towards the group of seers walking through the crates, she held her breath as she aimed the rifle at the head of the seer who she presumed to be their leader. Instead of an infiltrator’s military uniform, he wore civilian clothes, a black robe of the local style with an equally black sash and headband.

Chandre couldn’t see his face, but she suspected she knew who he was.

She recognized the long-legged gait and the shape of his frame, which was tall even for a seer and borderline skeletal, even in the robe.

She remembered him from South America, well enough for her jaw to clench.

She continued to follow his body with the infrared scope, losing him here and there among the crates. Placing her feet carefully as she tested her balance, she shifted her position slightly, trying to improve her vantage without making any noise.

Once she’d improved it as much as she thought she could––safely, at least––she waited for Menlim to emerge. She hoped to catch him not long after he exited through that final opening, meaning the one leading into the last, open third of the warehouse floor.

She counted through the seconds, waiting.

She waited past where it felt like she should have had to wait.

Then she heard his voice.

Chandre knew it was his instantly. She recognized it, even as it filled the length of the empty stretch of warehouse between that maze of crates. She could nearly see his words, hanging in the air as his light twisted out towards the seers standing between those human-sized rat cages.

Towards the Sword.

“Isre l’ange si nedri az’lenm...isre ti’a ali di’ suletuum...”
his voice boomed, echoing strangely in the dark.
“Isre l’ange si nedri az’lenm...isre ti’a ali di’ suletuum...sala. Sala ‘ti. Sala ‘ti, mongare sa’...Alyson...”

Chandre flinched.

She pulled her eye off the scope, looking for him with her naked vision. Seeing nothing, she put her eye back to the round opening and swung the infrared scope along that same line, looking for him again that way.

Menlim still did not appear.

He must have stopped before he cleared the crates enough to be in her line of sight.

Even as she thought it, Chandre saw soldiers appear at the fringes of that same line. She noted their positions but didn’t move the rifle.

She didn’t want to blow her cover for one of them.

She wanted their leader. Menlim.

Once she got him, she would shoot at the rest.

Jerking her eye off the scope briefly a second time, she scanned the nearby crates, trying to decide if she could safely move positions again to get a better angle without being seen. The jump down really wasn’t close, though. Now that the soldiers were in the wider warehouse, it was too risky. If a firefight broke out on the ground, she could move without being noticed... but of course by then it may be too late.

Then, she would have already ceased to be the backup that Dehgoies envisioned.

“Isre l’ange si nedri az’lenm...”
the seer repeated, raising his deep voice louder. It seemed to reverberate through Chandre’s aleimi, despite her stillness.
“Isre ti’a ali di’ suletuum...sala. Sala ‘ti. Sala ‘ti, mongare sa’...Alyson...”

Silence fell over the warehouse.

Chandre wasn’t in the Barrier, so she couldn’t feel any of what was going on from that added vantage, but something about that silence felt charged.

Even as she thought it, something changed.

Chandre heard some kind of commotion in the area by those cages.

She didn’t raise her eye off the gun’s sight.

Whatever it was, she couldn’t help with it. She had her own job to do.

The thought repeated and she once more stilled her light, keeping the scope focused on that line of crates, waiting for Shadow to emerge so she could use the gun for what it had been intended.

He had to emerge, sooner or later.

Chandre told herself that, even as she rearranged her hands on the organic rifle, holding her breath to steady her aim even further. She settled her weight more firmly on her grav-booted heels as she did, steeling her whole body, her whole mind, to wait for the shot.

She’d been trained as a sniper.

No matter what else was going on in the warehouse, her role was the shot.

She had to wait for the shot.

So that was precisely what she would do.

33

TAKING THE BULLET

I WAS STILL lost there, in no time, staring up at Revik’s glowing eyes...

When suddenly, a shape appeared in front of me.

I couldn’t make sense of it, even as my own light flared in that half-instant of space the person standing there bought me. The shape distracted Revik, pulling his eyes, pulling his light... a bare handful of seconds, maybe not even that... but it bought me time.

Just enough time.

Time to bring my own telekinesis online.

It happened fast, before my mind could catch up... and then my physical vision got erased when my own eyes ignited.

Revik’s light erupted then, reaching for me, but my light reacted in the same half-second, expanding out of me only to hit a hard wall.

I felt that crackling current, shuddering my whole form through the current of his light.

For a long-feeling couple of seconds, we were at a standoff.

He shoved at me in that space, and I shoved back, and then he did something to twist around my light, moving so quickly that I let out a startled gasp.

We broke, and I found myself standing there, panting, facing him.

Whoever had stepped between us was still there, I realized.

“Get the fuck out of the way!” I shouted.

I reached for him, meaning to shove him away from both of us, but before I could, his body jerked sideways as if it had been hit by a wrecking ball. I didn’t follow it with my eyes. I had enough presence of mind to know I couldn’t, not now, but I felt it hit hard against the metal bars of the cage, a good fifteen feet from where we stood.

Silence fell over the space.

I felt the other seers around us, paralyzed. For another long breath, I think I might have been paralyzed too, staring up at Revik even as fear coursed through my light.

Unlike Revik with me right now, I didn’t want to hurt him.

That not wanting to hurt him would be a huge disadvantage, I knew. My mind spent less than a millisecond of thought on that knowledge, but it sent terror coursing through me.

Somewhere in that, my light flicked out, touching the bare edges of the body now crumpled on the cement floor like a broken doll. I tasted it only long enough to recognize the high-cheekboned face, the long dark hair that fell over his neck, his green, violet-rimmed eyes. I could feel those eyes closed now, knew they may never open again, but I knew who it was, even though I couldn’t look over there very long, not even with my light.

Dalejem. He’d stepped between me and Revik.

Dalejem just basically saved my life.

Well.

Temporarily, anyway.

Next to me, voices erupted. I felt hands on my arms, pulling me back, but I knew it wouldn’t do any good. I didn’t even waste the breath or my concentration to tell them that, but continued to stare at Revik, my light charged where it remained high up, wound into the structures of my telekinesis.

When they grabbed hold of me a second time, I elbowed them off me, gasping as I watched the structures in Revik’s light ignite again.

“Get back!” I shouted, not tearing my eyes off his face. “Get back! Fuck! Are you stupid?”

I managed to writhe free, even as I slammed out at Revik with my light.

The force of my blow threw the seers away from me.

It also threw Revik’s back into the bars of the nearest cage.

I saw his eyes close, a bare shimmer of pain in his body, but he didn’t lose his balance.

He didn’t lose his focus, either.

Before I could even take a breath, he hit out at me with his light... a fuck of a lot harder than I’d hit out at him. The thought flashed in me again of how much harder it would be to stop him when I was terrified of hurting him. Unlike me, he threw everything he had at me the second that gap hit after I’d expelled most of my light.

My feet left the ground, almost before I knew what had happened.

I barely had time to construct a shield––something Revik himself, incidentally, insisted I learn––but I managed it midair.

Again, mostly because he’d hammered it into me, again and again.

Even so, I moved across that empty space so fast that it sucked the air out of my lungs, hurting my back and neck from the displacement of the air... and that was even before I’d hit. I crashed into the first solid thing between Revik and where I’d started, which happened to be a crate a good fifteen feet off the ground.

Slamming into it, more or less head-first, I let out a stunned gasp of air.

Even with the shield, it knocked the wind out of me completely.

Worse, I lost hold of the shield from the impact, too, so I cried out in real pain when I landed, hard, on the cement floor below.

Revik didn’t wait.

He threw his light at me again before I could recover, and then he was trying to get at my bones, specifically my spine, my neck.

Realizing he was trying to snap one or both, I shoved out at him with my light, crying out in terror. That time, I hit at him harder than I ever had, even as the thought crossed my mind again that I had to wrap my mind around hurting him, at least enough to knock him out. I was still holding back too much.

It was going to get me and him and Lily killed.

At the thought, tears came to my eyes.

I slammed him into the bars for real, hard enough that I saw his eyes roll back in his head, right before he sank to his knees, falling like a stone to the floor.

“STOP!”

I shouted it at him, filling my words with light, dragging myself to my feet. I held up a hand, my heart slamming like a jackhammer in my chest. I tried to reach him with my light a second time, trying to penetrate the fog I felt around the structures of his aleimi, strangling his mind, erecting a wall between my light and his.

“Revik!” I hit at the fogged wall harder. “REVIK! Snap out of it! Now! You’re going to kill both of us! You’re going to kill Lily, goddamn it!”

Still on his hands and knees, he slammed out at me again.

I fought to meet him in the space.