Allie's War Season Four (99 page)

What if they were men?
I asked softly.

He sent me a thread of pain intense enough that I jumped.

When I looked over, though, that taut look was back in his eyes, firming his mouth.

He’s going to try and separate us,
he sent, softer still.
I can feel it already.

I nodded, barely.

He might succeed,
Revik added.
If we’re going to do this for real.

Not for long,
I reminded him.
It’ll be okay.

If we knew that, we wouldn’t need to do it this way at all,
he sent, his mind sharper.
Allie. If they do, I’m not going to wait long. I mean it.

That time, I only nodded.

Shifting my eyes and light from his, I continued to check out the room, noting the security grid I could feel just behind the white plaster walls. There were definitely some surprises in here. I wondered how many more of them Revik had noticed already, given that he’d had a lot more experience looking for that kind of thing. He’d even worked with this kind of outfit before, he told me. He said it was pretty common for the Rooks to use groups like this as suppliers back in the day, especially when they were going for bulk orders.

He also said that this kind of exchange––meaning the one they’d proposed to us––wasn’t all that uncommon either. Seers working for organized crime had grown into their own kind of tribe over the years.

Reaching over, Revik fingered my necklace again.

Do we get a drink?
I asked him softly.

No. Don’t accept anything they offer you here, Allie. Food or drink.

A little surprised, I glanced up.

What about you?
I sent, teasing him a little, trying to lighten that look in his eyes.
I thought you said you might have to get drunk with them?

That’s different.
He hit me with a harder pulse of his light.
I mean it, Allie. Be careful. He was a little too interested when the subject of you came up. I don’t trust them to hold to their end of the deal, not when it comes to...

His thoughts trailed when three men approached us directly.

Again, they wore dark, expensive-looking suits.

These looked even more expensive, though, and had an embroidered image of the flaming red and gold sun, along with the roaring lion on the right side of each of their chests. I found myself staring at the darker image of the lion, focusing on the gold eye and wondering if it was sewn with real gold thread, considering where we were. The colors were muted to a mere imprint, subtle compared to what I’d seen on the armbands of the foot soldiers downstairs, but clearly, they were designed to send a message, too.

The Legion of Fire were a tight-knit little crime family, for sure.

The smallest of the three males stepped ahead of the other two when they got within a few yards. Folding his fingers elegantly at the center of his chest, he positioned himself as the apex of their little group, making the whole presentation and posture appear posed. That same male seer wore a version of the embroidered lion and sun only with a mandarin collar and additional gold thread around the sleeves and in part of the lion design itself.

Again, I wondered if it was real gold, and decided it probably was.

Either way, this guy definitely looked and felt like their leader.

His light sparked with unusual waves, but something about it felt familiar almost, and I realized I’d tasted flavors of his aleimi in the construct itself. The structures there fascinated me, but I didn’t get too close, only letting myself feel the bare edges before Revik tugged me away, wrapping me more carefully in his own light.

That’s when I noticed the male seer’s eyes.

His irises glowed a sharp gold, so deep in color they appeared almost opaque and nothing like the light-filled gold of Chinja’s eyes...or Hondo’s. I got lost briefly, looking at those eyes, seeing the ribbons of black coloring that emphasized and darkened the gold, making them look even more cat-like, and even less human.

They were the same eyes as those of the marbled lion in that wall mural, I realized.

I was still staring at them when the shorter seer spoke.

It had been so quiet up until then, borderline silent even with the casino and the ambient noises of running water and birds and glasses clinking and soft laughter and footsteps and now splashing naked people...that it felt like Revik and I operated from within our own private bubble. Since we’d stepped off that boat, I’d felt mostly disconnected from everything around us, borderline invisible, really, like we operated at a different frequency than the other people here. The fact that someone spoke to us directly, and in such a normal tone of voice, made me jump...almost like some part of me believed we really
were
invisible.

“Esteemed friends,” the small seer said, smiling at us in a friendly way. “I am Dulgar, oldest son of the Legion of Fire. We are so very honored to have you here with us.”

Those gold eyes settled directly on me.

I just stood there, unflinching, as his gaze flickered over my dress, pausing on my legs a few times on the way back up, then resting for a longer beat on my chest.

He was still staring at roughly the area of my neckline when he smiled again.

“...Very honored,” he murmured.

I heard the undercurrent even more clearly that time.

Next to me, Revik didn’t move.

Truthfully, I wasn’t worried about Revik the fighter. I never really worried about him. It was Revik my husband I worried about...meaning Revik-Revik, the man. I was wondering how
he
would handle this, given that I was the bait.

I needn’t have worried, though.

When I looked up, his face had smoothed to glass.

His expression, even his normally-expressive eyes, wore an overt armor that I didn’t see on him very often, not even back when I first met him and couldn’t read him at all. It wasn’t just his infiltrator mask, it was...something else. His military face, maybe.

In any case, I could tell he wasn’t operating down here much at all anymore. I strongly suspected that all of us had been converted into game pieces already...to be moved around within some wider battlefield he constructed in the less-visible areas of his mind.

Looking up at him, and seeing the faint glow that whispered around his irises, likely visible only to me, both relaxed me and charged my own light up in a subtle way.

In any case, one thing was abundantly clear.

We were on.

Yeah. This thing was definitely on.

3

MUTUAL INTEREST

I SAT CAREFULLY, conscious of the shortness of my dress as I lowered my weight to what looked like expensive, white leather. Once there, I didn’t cower, however.

There would have been no point, and anyway, I had my role to play, too.

Most of that consisted of using to full advantage the light tricks and physical machinations I’d learned as a consort of the Lao Hu.

Therefore, even as I rested my weight, I crossed my legs deliberately, wrapping my light in the remnants of my consort cloak. Subtly highlighting specific structures in my light, as well as the more vulnerable areas of my aleimi more generally, I settled deeper into the white leather and stretched out my legs. I didn’t open my light so much as tantalize with it, inviting speculation around what it might feel like if I
did
open it.

Next to me, Revik shifted his weight on the leather couch.

I couldn’t tell how much of that was pretense, either, until I glanced down, and saw that he was having a physical reaction, too. He didn’t look over at my glance, but I felt him fighting briefly to control his light, even as he kept his eyes firmly on our host.

I couldn’t think about his reactions either, though.

Turning to smile at our host, I opened my light slightly more, particularly around the area of my heart and chest. I gave a light toss of my head when Dulgar returned my smile. Then I leaned back, arranging my hair so that it fell over my shoulder and slightly down my front on one side. Re-crossing my legs, I placed my hands deliberately on the white leather, stroking it softly with my hands as I resettled in my seat.

From my light, however, I projected indifference, almost like I was bored, or at the very least, utterly at ease in my clothes and location.

Yeah, that was more Lao Hu crap, too.

They were pretty thorough with their lessons on that stuff.

By then, I had pretty much every male seer in the vicinity staring at me.

I guess it’s a bonus that I’d gotten really good at switching off my emotions when it came to playing this particular part, too. Hell, that end of things was almost rote.

My mind clicked over the logistics of the room, even as I smiled and murmured a thanks when one of the bulky guys in a dark suit made a respectful, almost nervous gesture in my direction, letting me know with a more subtle set of hand-gestures to ask him for anything I wanted. I felt a few female seers staring at me by then, too, despite their relative distance from our sequestered booth. The nearest of these, who lounged at the bar, wearing pretty revealing clothes, even turned to look at me with their physical eyes.

I suspected they were acquisitions, too, not members of the Legion of Fire themselves.

I also saw a few of them, females mostly, staring at Revik.

I’d already been warned that this particular “family” was heavily male, and not only in numbers. Likely due to the nature of their business, they adopted more of a female-as-subordinate stance than was normal for seers, even among groups like the Rooks.

I felt even more eyes on me in the Barrier, too, looking at those structures in my light, as well as the hints and touches I gave them of my aleimi more generally, particularly the more intimate layers in my belly and chest.

Again, as I’d been trained in what they called “The Courtship” under the Lao Hu, I shimmered slight sparks of those pieces of my aleimi into the wider construct, not really giving them more than a scent or a taste, but pulling all of them closer with my light. Even as they followed my sensual pull, I shut them out gently once more, right before they might have gotten a real look at what I felt like under those shields.

It was a maneuver meant to tantalize...and yeah, to frustrate.

Next to me, Revik tensed again.

He still didn’t look over at me, though.

They’d taken us to the booth situated furthest from the bar, in the most discreet corner tucked against the wall of the lounge. The fact that they wanted us in a more secluded area of the room didn’t surprise me.

Still, something about our location felt vaguely menacing, too.

To my left and behind our seer host, a fire flickered over white stones inside an open grate, its light reflecting against the surface of water in that decorative, white-stone basin. Even with the fire, however, I could barely make out the contours of Dulgar’s face.

Really, all I could see were faint sparks of reflection in those strangely-colored gold eyes.

My own eyes briefly tracked the course of the basin around nearby booths and tables, skirting those raised fireplaces at about waist-height and giving an Escher-like quality to the room’s design. I couldn’t make out any faces at all beyond those sitting at our table. I watched, my consort cloak still firmly in place, as two more big guys in suits shepherded everyone else out of our part of the room with subtle but authoritative gestures.