Allie's War Season Four (76 page)

Trying to, anyway.

Fighting back and forth for a few seconds as he tried to decide if he should risk taking her out first, Balidor decided to wait.

He wanted Ditrini.

He knew part of his reasons for that decision lay in irrationality. He hated the other seer, and feared him, more because of his psychopathic personality than his sight ranking, although both things weighed in the balance. Balidor rationalized his choice by telling himself that Ute remained a more or less unknown quantity, whereas Ditrini was known.

He needed Ditrini out of the picture, first.

Gripping the gun tighter, he kept it aimed at where he could see the top of Ditrini’s head, although Balidor’s lower angle meant that Ute managed to cover the larger seer’s form almost entirely with hers. Balidor had no clear shot, not without hitting her, which had no guarantee of hitting him, since she would inevitably divert the bullet. Balidor lay there, perfectly still, when their voices rose, presumably because they’d switched back from speaking in their minds to speaking old Prexci aloud.

“They’ve made us,” Ditrini said, his voice overtly hostile. “They fucking made us. That’s why they’re not coming up...”

“We need to crack the fields, find a way inside,” Ute said. Her voice caught in the wind, but Balidor heard the impatience in her tone. “They’ll have the Bridge on a lower floor...”

Balidor flinched, then frowned.

Suddenly he was listening with all of his might, forgetting about firing for the moment.

“We need to move before they can finish the evacuation,” Ute added, her voice still carrying that forced patience. “They’ll be gone if we don’t go soon, Ditrini. We can’t afford to stay up here any longer...clearly, their plans have changed!”

“And you are certain that the Sword has left the hotel?”

“Yes,” Ute said, her voice leaking impatience more openly that time. “I am sure. We heard from Salinse that the Sword entered the Tower over an hour ago. There’s no possible way he could be back here...Salinse said that they’d more or less neutralized him for now.”

“For now?” Ditrini queried. “They did not kill them, then?”

“No,” Ute said, her voice harder. “Why would they kill him?”

Ditrini didn’t seem to be listening to her, though. Balidor saw the barest hint of his profile as the male seer turned to the side, a faint puckering of his mouth that must have been a frown.

“Would he have brought her body with him, I wonder?” Ditrini said. “Did your Salinse say anything about the Sword having the Bridge’s body, too?”

“No! Gods!” Ute snapped, openly angry that time. “Why would they tell us to collect it, if they had the damned thing already? And why in the gods would he
do
that?” she added, her voice even angrier. “Why would anyone bring a
corpse
on a military op? Do you think the boss is so stupid? Or simply that he is as fucking crazy as you are, tiger man?”

From the position of his arms, Ditrini had put his hands on his hips.

Balidor didn’t get the sense that Ute’s words troubled him particularly, however.

“The boss?” the Lao Hu seer sneered. His voice held humor, despite the underlying edge of contempt. “Are you sure you know who it is you are working for, sister Ute?”

“He
should
be the boss,” Ute snapped. “He would be the boss still, if it wasn’t for that crazy bitch he married. Maybe with her gone, he’ll come to his damned senses...”

“No, my dear,” Ditrini said. He clicked at her softly, his voice holding a more genuine humor. “No, sister...no. He will not come to his senses, I’m afraid. He will be dead.”

“Maybe,” she shot back. “Salinse seemed less sure.”

“Did he, now?” Ditrini mused, his hands still on his hips. “He, like so many other arrogant despots over the years, believes he can break the bond, without establishing any connection prior to the mate’s death?”

“Salinse isn’t the one doing it,” Ute muttered. “It’s that other one. Shadow.”

“And how does he plan to do this, precisely?” Ditrini said, his voice dangerously soft. “Does he really believe it? Or is this just more mythological ranting from our mysterious man in black? More of his mystical prophesying about our glorious end of days...?”

“He claims he can do it because the Sword is one of the Four,” Ute said. “...He says that as long as the rest of the Four lives, he won’t die. He claims that being one of the Four makes him exempt from the life bond.”

“Yet, our Illustrious Sword almost died before, did he not? When he was separated from his mate? Or is our glorious prophet unaware of this detail...?”

Ute frowned.

Balidor saw her profile in full, and tightened his grip on the gun, when he realized it gave him a view of half of the male Lao Hu seer’s face. He backed down when the female turned back in Ditrini’s direction, once more blocking Balidor’s line of sight to the male seer, even as she folded her arms, widening her stance as she faced him.

“He did almost die,” Ute acknowledged. She made a vague gesture with one hand, but Balidor could practically see the conflict in her light, and her body. “I do not know how they plan to do it, old man. Perhaps it is different now, with War activated...or for some other reason. I only know that Salinse seemed sure it could be done...and that it had to do with the other two members of the Four.”

“You are hoping he is right?” Ditrini said, his voice silky once more.

“Of course I’m hoping he’s right!” she retorted. “As should any loyalist to the race!”

“Loyal, yes.” The older seer smiled; Balidor could hear it in his voice. “Yes...I imagine you would like to be very
loyal
to our brother, the Illustrious Sword.” The Lao Hu seer’s smile turned mocking, right before he let out a low chuckle. “...I imagine you would like to crawl to him on your hands and knees...am I right, sister Ute? Perhaps you hope to be there when your master explains to the Sword his
options
vis a vis the female seers who once more fall under his command. After all, you stuck by him, did you not, sister Ute? Retained your
loyalty
to him, even after he betrayed you, in favor of his worm-loving wife...?”

Balidor saw the woman’s ears turn red.

He imagined her face must be the same color, even before he saw her gloved fingers tighten around her ribs where they wrapped her upper body. She shifted her weight on her feet, tilting her chin up defiantly at the other seer.

“What of it?” she said. “Did you not wish for the same, once upon a time? With his wife?”

The Lao Hu seer gave a low chuckle, laying a hand on the female’s shoulder.

“I did, yes,” Ditrini acknowledged. “I very much did, my young sister...and still do, if only it were possible. I wish it more than I can express to you in words...” That low chuckle returned, crawling up Balidor’s spine. “...At least, not without making you blush even harder, my beautiful sister.” His voice changed, turning bitter, despite that more dramatic-sounding sorrow Balidor could hear. “...I have my own reasons for wanting to see the Sword again. But I’m afraid that ‘loyalty’ has very little to do with it for me. I, too, would enjoy seeing him beg, but perhaps not
quite
in the manner you envision, my lovely sister...”

Balidor felt his jaw harden more.

Still, all he could hear in the man’s voice was crazy. Bat-shit crazy, as Allie would have said, with a capital ‘B’ and ‘S’ and ‘C.’ Worse, the self-pity that lived in his words, the complete and total self-absorption behind them, brought a kind of heat to Balidor’s chest.

Even as he thought it, Ditrini let out a long-suffering sigh.

“I cannot describe to you the regret I feel at my precious girl’s passing,” he said to Ute, gripping her shoulder tighter. “My life is bereft without her. I do not yet know what I will do. Although...I confess I look forward to meeting her beautiful daughter. I have seen her image already, and it filled my heart with such joy, to see my precious girl in that lovely, innocent face...”

Balidor felt his teeth clench, even as nausea touched his gut.

He remembering the Lao Hu seer’s words about Allie, the visuals he’d subjected all of them to when they had him under interrogation. He’d gone out of his way to sexualize the Bridge in the most degrading ways possible, and he’d done it with that same, sickly tone in his voice.

The son of a bastard would lay hands on Allie’s daughter over Balidor’s dead body.

Just then, Ute moved out from under the older seer’s hand.

The moment stretched, a strange sort of silence taking over Balidor’s mind as the female stepped fluidly to one side. Only the sound of the wind over the roof broke the physical silence, but even that felt far away, strangely distant and unreal.

Balidor had time to see the disgusted look on Ute’s face, the faint curl of her lip, right before she gave him the opening he’d been looking for, waiting for, maybe for months now, ever since that first interview with Ditrini in the basement of the hotel.

Focusing his eye down the sight, Balidor adjusted his aim a hair’s breadth, centering it on the elongated face of the seer with the silver eyes and the long, braided, iron-gray hair.

Then, squeezing the stock of the gun more tightly against his shoulder...

Balidor fired.

23

WHITE RABBIT

“WHAT IS WRONG with her?” the male seer muttered. “The Bridge?”

He kept glancing backwards, Chandre noticed, his bare forearms and neck tense as he hunched over the open organic circuits. Chandre could see the hair standing almost erect on the back of the seer’s neck. She couldn’t tell if anxiety or cold caused the physical reaction, though, and she really hated the way he kept looking at the Bridge.

It was too familiar. Too familiar by half.

Frowning, Chandre glanced back at the vehicle where the old woman sat, holding the Bridge’s head in her lap.

“She’s dead,” Chan said, blunt.

“What?” Surli’s eyes jerked up, his dark pupils narrowing to pinpricks, making the calico hazel of his irises grow wider and larger-seeming. “What the
di’lantente a’guete
is that supposed to mean? Dead? How can she be dead? The Bridge?”

Fear had risen in the male’s eyes, a kind of low-level panic.

“She can’t be dead,” Surli said more firmly, as if daring her to argue. “It must be a trick...by that fucker Shadow. Why else would the old woman have her body?”

Chandre clicked softly, gripping the gun in her hand tighter.

She glanced at Anale, the female seer who came from the hotel with the old woman and the human girl, and then at Damon, a seer from her own team. Anale’s light gold eyes looked harder in the darkness of the street. Chandre watched them flicker up and down the unlit row between buildings, searching for threats, seemingly oblivious to the three of them by the Tower’s back doors. Even so, Chandre could tell that Surli’s words had affected Anale, too, even if they hadn’t lessened the alertness of her light as she stood guard.

Whatever Surli’s issues with the Bridge, he wouldn’t be the only one to react this way to the news of her death, Chandre knew. If it got out the Bridge had been killed, they’d have a full-scale panic on their hands among the survivors. Not only would seers feel grief at the loss of the intermediary, many would assume the war to be over, too...they would assume that the Dreng had won. Chandre wondered how many even in their own camp would jump sides to find protection with Shadow, in that event. She wondered how many of them would rationalize such a thing by claiming to follow Shadow’s new pet, the Formidable War.