Allie's War Season Four (204 page)

I blocked part of the hit in the process, lessening the force, but he still managed to throw me against the bars of the opposite wall, hard enough that I let out a groan, falling to my knees, just like he had done. Even so, I couldn’t let go of my light, and when he met me in the space, I gasped, fighting to keep him from getting close enough to kill me.

My head was bleeding now, dripping down the back of my neck.

I nearly passed out with dizziness when he finally backed off, but he didn’t give me long to recover. I’d barely regained my hold on those structures in my aleimi before we were struggling in the space again, each trying to knock the other one unconscious.

The difference was, I knew he’d kill me once he’d done it.

He was gaining on me too––I could feel it. He knew more ways to misdirect, to pull me off balance, to drain me. I felt the Dreng helping him in that, yanking parts of me into the construct as I struggled to think through my own foggy head.

I shoved him off me again, even as a sideways flick of his light darted out, throwing me sideways, so fast I barely managed to pull the shield around me in time to lessen the blow. Gasping, I only hung there for a moment, staring through the bars of the cage I held, barely seeing the pale faces that stared back at me.

I saw their expressions, though.

Terror filled their faces as the light from my eyes reflected in theirs.

I closed them, fighting to concentrate, but I couldn’t push the other thing from my head.

I was losing.

It wasn’t only my unwillingness to hurt him. He was better than me.

He was going to kill me. He was going to kill himself.

He was going to kill our daughter.

He tried to throw me sideways again, but I smacked down the snaking tendrils of light, right before he went after my heart, crushing it briefly in my chest before I managed to shove him off. I groaned in pain from what he’d done, even as he went after that part of my light he liked to coil into when we had sex. Gasping, I fought to keep him out, but I felt him getting into my light through those cracks that connected us, deeper that time...

Too deep. Deeper than I could extricate myself.

I felt my separation pain spike, the part of me that wanted so desperately to coil into him, to rebuild the bond that Terian had broken over the last month.

Remembering Lily, I gritted my teeth, trying to shove him out. Forcing out a burst of light, I tried to break his hold again, even as I grabbed the bars more tightly in my hands, using them to drag myself to my feet.

Turning, I slammed out with my light again once I was upright, trying to get him off me for real, if only to give myself some breathing room.

I felt my light hit, sliding past his shields at the last minute when I traced that pain back to his own half-severed bond. He gasped, then saw what I was doing and tried to block it, but too late. Even so, the blow that finally reached him was definitely weaker that time. It got him to let go, but for barely a half second.

Then he was after me again.

It wasn’t enough. No matter what I did, it wouldn’t be enough. He would continued to worm his way deeper into my light. Eventually, he would get in. He would get in for the same reason that I could always get in with him, even when he was a servant of the Dreng. He would get in because he and I were so tied together there would be no stopping it.

“Revik,” I groaned. “Revik. Don’t do this, baby. Please. Please...”

He was using the bond.

Sex, the bond... us. He was using us.

I couldn’t fight us. I never could.

“I love you...” I told him.

He didn’t seem to hear me. His light was using everything that connected us to one another, only now he was using it to get at me. Feeling myself lose ground again, I fought him harder, trying to force him out, but I couldn’t. His light was tied too inextricably to mine.

“Revik... Lily. You’re going to let him kill Lily...”

I thought about the reality of my own words and slammed out at him again, hard enough to throw him sideways that time, and into the wall.

I watched in a kind of hazy disbelief as he fell, then went sliding across the floor on his stomach. His fingers were bloody now, and his arm, but it seemed like bare seconds passed before he stopped his backwards momentum, gripping the cement with his fingers.

His long legs splayed where he sprawled between both sets of cages.

That time, I saw his eyes flare like headlamps, right before he cracked out with his light, hard enough to take my breath, even before it hit me.

The force ripped me off the bars set in the wall, again making my feet leave the ground. The force of the hit sending me flying, weightless, through the air. I existed in that silence for what felt like seconds before slamming into a crate with my side and the small of my back.

The thing was heavy, but the force of the blow moved it, right before I crumpled at its base.

I hadn’t managed to shield the blow at all that time.

That time, all I could do was lie there for a few seconds, gasping.

Blood ran freely down my face when I raised my head.

I fought to blink through it, to focus my eyes. I focused my light, fighting to shield, but fear exploded over me when I realized I could already feel him inside my aleimi, winding through my bones and flesh.

Hell, I was barely managing to stay conscious.

I wouldn’t win this, I realized again.

Revik was going to kill me. He was going to kill me and Lily.

He was going to kill himself.

Even as I thought it, there was a loud, hollow sound from somewhere behind me.

I heard it and flinched, ducking my head. At that point, I more than half-expected it to mean that something hard had just caved in the back of my head.

But whatever had happened, it hadn’t happened to me.

Revik’s light retracted.

It happened fast. Fast enough to catch my breath, to force a moan from my lips.

That sparking, high-intensity flame evaporated from my skin and aleimi like a fire that’s been snuffed out from lack of air.

Still gasping, I turned my head, looking over my own shoulder. I blinked through the blood that ran freely down my face, blinding me from most of the room.

I could see a few things, despite the sparking glow that remained in my eyes. I could see a few, key details even through the blood that coursed down my face and neck.

Terian stood there, grinning.

I stared at him for a long-feeling few seconds, confused at the smile on his face, the dancing light in his amber-colored eyes, the way he danced on his heels like an overexcited kid.

Then I saw the metal pipe he held. He gripped it in both hands, kind of like it was a baseball bat, and he was getting ready to hit a ball out of the park.

Or maybe like he already had.

Even as I thought it, I looked at the end of the pipe, and realized that dark color I saw there was blood.

My eyes shifted down, seeing Revik’s body crumpled at Terian’s feet. Staring between the two of them for a few seconds more, I struggled to make sense of the whole picture, feeling adrenaline continue to spark and stutter through my blood as my aleimi sparked like a downed electrical cable around my body.

Everything in me was telling me I was in danger still, that I was about to die.

But I couldn’t move. I could only stare at Terian and Revik, fighting to piece it together, to get it all to make sense. I was still trying to decide what I was seeing, when a shot echoed through the hollow space of the warehouse behind me, causing me to flatten my body and head back against the cement floor.

I had no idea who was shooting.

As far as my mind could tell me... it didn’t really matter at that point.

I was pretty sure whoever it was, they were probably shooting at me.

CHANDRE WAITED FOR Menlim to leave the opening between the crates.

She did not raise her head, not even when the sound from by the cages grew loud enough that she flinched. Hearing another slamming noise, like something heavy being slammed into something even heavier, she fought not to let her imagination fill in those blanks. Even so, her mind imagined bodies being thrown into walls, possibly having all of their bones broken as they collided with less-yielding objects and materials.

Forcing the morbidity of such thoughts from her mind, Chandre gripped the gun tighter. Holding her breath, she scanned the dark with the infrared, keeping the scope on the area where the Dreng infiltrators all appeared to be exiting the wall of crates.

A louder crash came from the area to her right. Chandre nearly raised her head to look, when suddenly, a cloth-covered head appeared in the open floor right past the crates.

He stopped there again, with only half of his head showing. Chandre found herself swearing soundlessly in Prexci under her breath when he didn’t move.

“Come on, you
endruk et dugra upara d’ kitre...”
she muttered.

Just then, a hollow thunk sound came from the area of the cages.

It was softer than anything she’d heard from there in the last few minutes, but weirdly loud in the quiet that preceded it. Chandre almost turned her head a second time, but movement in front of her brought her eye abruptly back to the scope.

A bare second after the sound, the robed figure strode forward.

Without looking at anything around him, he moved fast, aiming his feet for the opposite side of the warehouse. Through the scope, Chandre saw his narrow face set in an expression so furious that she found herself holding her breath, and not only for the shot.

He’d only made it a half-dozen more steps before she drew a bead on him.

She followed him for a few paces more, to be sure she had the exact speed of his long legs. Then, holding her breath for real that time, she stilled her whole body...

And fired.

She knew even before she finished squeezing the trigger that she’d made the shot.

Even so, she didn’t raise her head from the infrared scope until she saw the spray of blood. She watched it plume out, just behind the area of his head, right before the robed figure stopped, one foot swaying in the air, nearly mid-step.

Then, entirely without fanfare, he crumpled soundlessly to the cement floor.

Chandre checked it with her physical eyes, too, just to make sure, but didn’t waste time beyond the initial confirmation. Opening her light to let out the signal flare, she emitted one, strong blast to brothers Wreg and Balidor on the other side of that line.

Then she returned her eyes to the scope.

Her next target was the nearest of the black clad infiltrators.

Now, there was no need to wait.

She simply began to fire.