Allie's War Season Four (44 page)

Cass laughed, even as she put her hand over one of Kani’s ears.

“Language, Papa,” she said, her voice mockingly stern.

“Sorry, poppet,” he said apologetically. Walking closer to the two of them, he wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her and Kani against his side before he leaned down to kiss her cheek. “I got overexcited...”

“I see that,” Cass said, smiling at him fondly.

Looking back at the monitor, she frowned slightly, even as she saw the images click through to another track, displaying views from a whole different set of cameras. Several of those views around the rim of the larger monitor showed the docks on fire, as well, and Cass flinched in reflex when one of the OBE transformers exploded in a dramatic, fireworks-like shower of sparks. She watched as the gateway to the shore closed as the fire continued to burn, seeing that part mostly with her aleimi.

He’d just cut off the eastern docks.

“Someone’s having a good time,” she murmured. Shaking her head and smiling at Terian, she went back to bouncing Kani against her hip. After watching the monitor for a few more seconds, she looked at the little girl’s serious face, making another mock frown.

“Is that your daddy?” she asked the little girl, shaking her playfully as she pointed at the screen. “Is that your daddy, precious? Is he blowing stuff up? Is he?”

Terian laughed, kissing the little girl on her dark head before he planted a significantly more adult kiss on Cass’s mouth.

“Are we taking a field trip soon?” Terian asked her, wrapping his arms around her from behind, his amber eyes sharp on the screen. “Going to see daddy in person?”

Cass snorted another laugh, even as she saw a light blinking on the edge of the monitor.

Menlim. He must be watching this, too.

He wanted to talk to her. No surprise there.

“Hold her for me, will you?” she murmured to Terian, handing over Kani. Once Terian had the little girl balanced in his arms against his chest, Cass straightened her suit jacket and shirt, right before she turned, heading back into the other room. She could tell by the signal that Menlim wanted her to come to him in private this time.

“I’ll only be a few minutes,” she called back to Terian. “...An hour at most. You can feed her while I’m gone, if she gets hungry.”

“You don’t want me to come along, dearest?” Terian called after her.

“Not for this one, no,” Cass said, smiling at him.

Changing her mind, she shucked off the suit jacket by the table, pulling her red leather jacket off the dining room chair instead. Sliding a hand into the nearest arm, she pulled it around her back, inserting her other arm before she tugged her long hair free of the back collar and shook it so that it hung straight down her back.

“Play with baby girl,” she added. “I’ll fill you in when I get back.”

Terian grinned at her, wolf-like. He raised up one of Kani’s pudgy little hands by the wrist, helping her to wave her tiny fingers at Cass as the latter walked towards the outside door.

“Say bye-bye to mommy, precious,” Terian cooed. “Say bye-bye mommy...”

Kani laughed, waving under Terian’s guiding fingers.

Cass waved back, laughing. “Bye-bye, precious!”

“She’s going to make a welcoming party for your
other
daddy,” Terian confided softly into the girl’s ear. “Aren’t you, mommy? Making a nice big party for Daddy Revik? With a cake? And lots and lots of friends and presents...?”

Cass grinned in response, giving Terian a wink as she adjusted her shirt, tucking it into her pants before she slid her foot into one of the Italian-made red pumps standing by the door.

“Don’t let her watch the feeds for too long,” she cautioned him, settling her heel before she stepped into the second shoe.

“I won’t, mummy...cross my heart.” Terian said, using Kani’s fingers to cross her own heart on her small chest. Terian smiled wider when the little girl giggled at the game, following the motion with those shockingly light eyes. “We won’t watch the nasty, nasty feeds, will we, Kani darling? We’ll find something more fun to do...maybe you can ride Uncle Ulrich again?”

The guard by the door, who happened to be that very same Ulrich, smiled, even as he bowed respectfully to Cass, keeping his head low as he opened the door for her.

Still smiling, he stood out of the way so Cass could enter the outside corridor.

Cass laughed, too. Flipping her hair over her shoulder, she gave the two of them a last wave before she walked out, the grin still widening her lipsticked mouth.

JON FORGOT TO breathe.

Faces surrounded him, people clapping him on the back, touching him, clinging to his arms briefly then releasing him as he wove through the seemingly endless, snaking crowd. Everything felt surreal, like being caught in a confusing dream filled with half-remembered faces, fingers touching him only to leave behind flickering pulses of presence and memory. Warmth flowed through the strands that held him, and Jon felt Revik there, stronger than the rest, wrapped into and around Allie’s light like a protective shield, but refusing to hide her, either.

He wouldn’t hide her.

They walked through the front doors, just like Revik said they would.

It didn’t really sink in to Jon why Revik had insisted on that, what it meant to him, to bring Allie in openly, not hiding her from the seers and humans who rushed around them, fighting to touch her, to see her, to be near her, most of them not even seeming to notice that faraway stare in her eyes. That same stare might focus on them, or on the high windows of the House on the Hill behind them, shining brilliantly with their organic shields temporarily lifted...or she might be staring at a bird winging against the dark blue of the sky, or a piece of trash in the road, or one of the paintings in the lobby, or a birthmark on someone else’s face.

None of it mattered to any of them.

Jon felt shame when he realized that.

If it had been him, he might have snuck her in through the back. He knew Revik was right and he was wrong, and that shame worsened.

Gods. Why had he judged Revik for what he did with her?

She was still Allie, regardless of how much or how little of her remained.

Jon recognized faces, but most flashed by too quickly for him to react with more than a jerk and a flicker of shock. By the time he’d reached the actual floor of the lobby, that fire in his chest had worsened, though, bringing stinging tears, seemingly out of nowhere.

But not nowhere. He’d pushed all of these people out of his mind, too, just like he had Allie. He’d barely let himself think about any of them since he’d last looked down on that tsunami wave slamming Manhattan’s shores...because truthfully, up until this very moment, he’d doubted he’d ever see any of them again, at least not alive.

The fact of his own cowardice hit him again, harder as he looked at the group of humans, watching the proceedings somberly from the side.

His people. Christ.

He’d barely spoken to any of them since he’d left. He’d heard from Balidor that Revik had been in touch with his and Allie’s family, but Jon himself hadn’t been; he hadn’t even tried to contact any of them. Revik even asked him once, to call his Aunt Carol, maybe so she could hear from someone she knew about Allie, or maybe just so she could be comforted by Jon’s voice, by Jon being alive. Jon hadn’t done it though, even then.

The guilt of his own avoidance hit him harder, making his chest hurt.

He wiped his eyes angrily with the back of his hand, even as he felt another flush of light from Revik, who seemed to have taken it upon himself to keep this reunion from becoming overly maudlin or depressing, even if he had to bolster some of them up artificially to get through it.

Jon knew he wouldn’t see all of the seers he remembered from here, either. Seers and humans had died since he’d left on that helicopter. Not surprisingly, they’d lost a lot more people here than Revik had in San Francisco. Seers died in the basement and sewer floods. They’d been shot on patrols, and even in that mess right before the tsunami, where a half-dozen Adhipan and ex-rebels had been chased through the streets while they looked for Allie, as well as Revik, Jon and Maygar, when Ditrini took them out of the basement cells.

Some had been killed right alongside their pursuers when the first wave of the tsunami hit.

Jon looked out over the faces he did know, flinching more at each one. He continued to be propelled deeper into the hotel, but he couldn’t see who held him anymore, could barely take looking at even the seers who’d been with them the whole way.

Even so, he glimpsed Neela arm in arm with Anale and Argo, two of the female seers who’d stayed behind in New York. He watched Neela throw her head back in a laugh at something one of them said, tears in her eyes as she paused to kiss Vikram on the mouth, more friendly than otherwise, but still making him blush and smile when it ended. Jon saw Garensche grinning almost stupidly at Holo, who he enveloped in a hug along with Jax, and it hit Jon only then that he’d
never
seen Jax and Holo separated for very long before all of this happened...but Holo got left behind when Jax joined the search party for Revik.

Squinting through the pile of faces, limbs and bodies as he got pushed and led through the main part of the lobby, Jon realized that most of those bodies still enveloped Revik and Allie more than the rest. Jon saw seers walk up just to touch the two of them, many with tears in their eyes, some making religious signs with their hands. Jon saw the owner of the hotel, Naldaran, among those who came to pay their respects, as well as the seer who helped Allie pick out the dress she’d worn for her wedding to Revik in Central Park.

Tears choked Jon again at the thought, more than he could handle suddenly.

The seers crammed around him barely seemed to notice, but Jon suddenly couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see as he got shoved roughly along with the others towards the area near the fireplace and under that mural of Seertown.

An arm wrapped around his shoulders then, and Jon looked up to see Jorag standing there, tears in his own eyes. He grinned down at Jon, squeezing him hard against his muscular body, even as he used his free hand to clasp Delek around the neck and then Ike around the shoulders, squeezing them each affectionately in turn as Delek laughed aloud, clapping Jorag on the back.

Jon felt that sickness in his light worsen when his eyes shifted forward, in time to see one of the female seers from the military group leap out of the crowd to pull Wreg into an embrace, kissing him on the mouth. That kiss was significantly less platonic than Neela’s had been with Vikram, and Jon found himself turning away when Wreg returned it, pulling her against him with a laugh right after they parted.

Jon found his eyes returning to the Chinese-looking seer almost against his will, watching as Wreg exchanged hugs with Hondo and Mika. He couldn’t help noticing that the female seer who kissed him, who he was pretty sure was named Preela, didn’t leave his side.

Jon fought not to care, to push it out of his light, but he couldn’t.

Maybe it was everything else going on, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t even hide it.

Something must have left him, enough to reach Wreg’s light, because Wreg turned, staring at Jon with those black eyes, from what must have been twenty feet away. Jon met that stare and found he couldn’t look away. He didn’t hide the charge in his light, either, although if he did that deliberately or simply couldn’t control it, he couldn’t decide, either.

Whatever the cause, Wreg seemed to get the message.

Jon felt a flush of relief when the older seer stepped away from Preela, putting some distance between their light.