Allie's War Season Four (205 page)

“HELP ME, TERRY!” I snapped, still fighting to see past the blood dripping down my face. “Get him out of the way!”

I’d dragged Revik’s body most of the way to the barred cages on my side of the aisle, but he was damned heavy, and I was wearing the most impractical shoes imaginable for dragging unconscious husbands across cement floors in the middle of a firefight.

Terian walked up to me willingly enough.

Not even bothering to duck to keep out of the way of the firefight, he gripped Revik’s other arm. Around us, Jax, Chinja, Stanley, Deklan and Anale continued to fire at black-clad infiltrators from behind crates on either side of the wider aisle. I saw Surli loading a new magazine next to two of the Terian bodies, the one that looked like Revik and the Arabic-looking one, both of whom I’d forgotten about since we got in here.

They were firing on the black-clad soldiers, too.

Between me and Terian, we got Revik behind those same crates.

I’d already checked his head... and his pulse.

He wasn’t bleeding as much as me, but he had a massive lump on the back of his head that scared the hell out of me, even beyond how little I could feel of his light.

“You better not have killed him,” I snapped at Terian, fighting to control the fear that wound through my light. I crouched next to him again, caressing his face, feeling his skin and throat under my fingers, reassuring myself that he was still alive.

Terian chuckled, gesturing in the negative when I looked up.

“Young love. It is so fickle.”

Looking up long enough to scowl at him, I tried to find it funny, but couldn’t.

By then, that same Terian with the amber eyes and the dark red hair was crouched behind the crates too. He peered past me for a few seconds, his gaze following the firefight with some interest before he glanced down to grin at me yet again.

“Do not worry, my lovely, lovely sister Alyson. I would never kill Revi’. He’s my brother.” Smiling wider, he inclined his head sideways. “Anyway, don’t you know? Revi’s almost impossible to kill. Compared to most people, especially. Most people are very very easy to kill. Like butterflies. Or a person’s dreams.”

I grunted at his words, trying to find the humor in those, too, and failing.

Still fighting anger, I tried to shove the fear from my mind, if only by focusing the direction of my thoughts elsewhere while I continued to hover over Revik.

“Where’s Feigran?” I asked Terian. My eyes scanned faces in the cages. “Is he here, Terry? Or was that another lie?”

Terian clicked at me softly, smiling as he shook his head.

“No?” I said, biting my lip to keep from snapping at him. He had, after all, just saved my life. Even if he’d done it in a way that made me want to punch him in the face. “No to which part? Terry, if he’s not here, then where the hell is he?”

Terian motioned with his chin towards the other side of the warehouse.

It took me a second. Then I found I understood.

“In the house?” I frowned, thinking. “Is that Feigran’s house, Terry? The one with the pool?” Understanding slowly made its way through my light, probably from Terian himself. “Is this boathouse on Feigran’s land?”

Grinning, Terian tilted his head yet again.

That time, I could have smacked him for real.

I really could have.

But yeah, he’d just saved my life, so I didn’t do it that time, either.

Instead, I held out a hand, fighting impatience when he just looked at it.

“Give my your gun, Terry,” I said, my voice hard.

“My...
gun?”
He raised an eyebrow at me, his expression openly puzzled.

Seeing the bewildered look on his face, it hit me. He wasn’t fucking with me that time. Well, he was, but not in the way I would have thought. He wasn’t reluctant to give me his gun.

He genuinely didn’t understand why I would need it.

After a few more seconds of thought, where I crouched there in that skin-tight dress, balancing on six-inch heels, I realized I didn’t really understand why I’d wanted Terry’s gun, either. My husband was lying unconscious on the cement.

We had––at minimum––over a hundred seers to move out of these cages.

And I was done with Dubai.

Like,
really
done with it.

Even as I thought it, I glanced over my shoulder at the crumpled form of Dalejem, feeling a sharper pain in my heart. I didn’t even know if he was alive. He hadn’t moved since Revik threw him against that wall, and I hadn’t been over there yet to check.

At the thought, I rose smoothly to my feet, igniting the higher regions of my aleimi before I’d even straightened to my full height. Immediately, the guns of several of the soldiers swiveled in my direction, but from those same higher structures, I already knew where they stood.

In less than a second, the cracking sound of exploding metal echoed through the warehouse space. I ignited the material in the plasma rifles pretty much simultaneously... but I still heard them one by one as they exploded at slightly different rates.

Feeling another gun go up in the half-second that followed, I ignited that one, too.

Then four more, as soon as I caught glimmers of the light of the seers holding them.

I still felt more angry, pissed off, and afraid for Revik than anything.

I also felt pretty damned impatient to get the hell out of there, probably because of those things.

Three more guns followed that last one, then I was scanning openly, searching the space for more of them. I felt two more infiltrators running out the back door, but I stopped them in their tracks, cracking their spines with scarcely a pause when it occurred to me they might be running to the house where Terian claimed Feigran was staying.

I felt a little guilty about those, but yeah...only a little.

When I finished, the warehouse felt really, really quiet.

It took me a few seconds more to realize that everyone left alive in it was staring at me, from the seers crouched behind crates directly in front of me, holding guns they were no longer using, to the rows of seers and humans filling the cages to either side of where we stood.

The silence went on for a few seconds more.

Then, out of nowhere––

Terian giggled.

IT DIDN’T TAKE as long as I’d feared to get everyone moving again.

Dalejem was alive, which I admit, filled me with relief.

Of course, there was no guarantee he would stay that way, and a really good chance he wouldn’t. Even so, I was relieved Revik hadn’t killed him instantly.

We used a couple of tarps and boards to build makeshift stretchers. Then I used some of the List seers and humans to carry Revik and Dalejem out of there.

I needed my infiltrators free to use their weapons and their sight.

Even among the Listers, I pulled a few with decent-seeming sight rank, who appeared to have some military savvy. Since we’d just freed them from a very unfriendly-looking cage, they didn’t argue when I put them under Surli’s command.

Then again, given what they’d just seen go down between me and Revik, as well as the way I must have looked with blood all over my face and what I’d done to those seers who had been firing at us––they might have been afraid to argue. Lending credence to the latter theory, the ones who eventually took guns from me and the others all made the respectful sign of the Bridge and kept their heads lower than mine when I addressed them.

Two of them voiced their allegiance to me then and there, which yeah, was unnerving.

I didn’t have time to worry about that now, though.

I got everyone moving instead, including Chandre after she’d jumped down from a high stack of crates, meeting us on the warehouse floor.

She told me at once that she’d already sent out the evac signal, and that Balidor had just transmitted back, telling her that they had boats on their way to pick us up. Balidor gave her an ETA of nine minutes before he’d have transport for all of us up the coast.

There, we’d return to land, still inside the security perimeter of the city, and walk out a secondary gate on the landlocked side. That same gate was where Wreg, Jon and the others were waiting for us, ready to lead us across the sand dunes and hopefully back to relative safety.

Hopefully.

According to Chandre, Balidor advised us we shouldn’t wait. He thought the construct may have been weakened by Menlim’s temporary demise, and wanted us out of there before that changed. He definitely wanted us out of there before they retaliated.

Which was perfectly fine with me.

I just needed to make one stop first.

I left most of them on the dock, behind the boathouse-slash-warehouse, waiting to signal our people to the shore. Surli and Stanley had instructions to start loading the wounded and the more civilian-types among the human and seer Listers while I went back for Feigran.

Bringing Chinja, Chandre, Jax and Terian with me, I stopped only long enough to switch out my high heels for boots from a female Dreng infiltrator I’d killed––trying really damned hard not to see the morbid crappiness of that as I did it––before we booked back across the lawn and towards the plantation-style house that lived on the other end of the grounds.

We found Feigran only a few minutes later.

He was sitting in the bubbling hot tub, staring up at the stars, a tropical drink clutched in one hand. He only lowered his chin to look at all of us after we’d clustered most of the way around the edges of the steaming, jet-filled water, and stared down at him.

Seeing me there, among the other faces, he broke out in a face-splitting grin, relief pouring out of his light, even as he let go of the drink, not seeming to notice when it disappeared under the surface of the frothing water.

Shaking my head at the expression there, I clicked under my breath.

But yeah, I couldn’t help it.

I grinned back at him.

Feigran, man.

What else are you gonna do?

34

SAND

WE WALKED FOR hours out in that desert.

Somewhere in those stretch of hours, I think my light finally calmed down enough that I was thinking clearly again, and more or less running on rationality versus pure emotion, instinct and adrenaline.