Allie's War Season One (144 page)

“...for example...several throws, mixed with whatever the examiners felt like tossing his or her way...depending on what they knew of their birth rank and current level of skill. As you are telekinetic, you would have been required to hold it airborne while reflecting different parts of your aleimi through it. A gauge of control, you see...”

Terian placed the wand in Nenzi’s outstretched palm.

In the boy’s pale fingers, the bottle-green urele looked enormous.

Nenzi glanced at me. I was getting better at reading his face. I could see he wanted to do as well as Terian...but he didn’t want to make a fool of himself trying.

So he was competitive with the other male. I had wondered.

I was still thinking about this when he threw the urele up in the air. He didn’t throw it as hard or as high or as elegantly as Terian had done; the urele went up in a slightly off-kilter line, rising halfway up the curved walls.

But the less-flattering differences immediately grew inconsequential. I saw the boy’s fingers curl into fists as his eyes followed the bottle-green glass. I wondered if he was trying to figure out how it worked...

...when the urele burst out violently in flaming tongues of light.

I stared up, my mouth open.

I didn’t blink as light cascaded down around us in a dense rain. Nenzi’s light appeared as three-dimensional beads. A complex, woven dome emerged around the three of us, instead of Terian’s prism’d reflection; it looked almost like water. The consistency of the dome grew more and more subtle...from a curtain of the finest silk, it melted to perfectly symmetrical walls of thinned paint.

My heart suddenly hurt. I felt for the kid, deeply at times; I couldn’t help it. Somehow, seeing his light manifested around me only brought the emotions more sharply into relief.

What he could do, who he really was...it was so incredibly beautiful.

He should never have been allowed to be made into a twisted, dark tool of the Dreng, of Menlim.

That someone like him could have ended up a monster...

It was unthinkable.

The urele floated higher. I could no longer see the sunroof, the sun, the blue sky. I gazed up at the zenith of a waterfall of light. The curtain thickened as he raised it higher still. I knew by now he was floating the urele as he experimented with his light in the bottle-green wand. He glanced at me then, and I saw a faint gleam in his eyes, different from the look that normally lived there. The expression seemed to belong to someone closer to forty than to fourteen.

I remembered windows shattering in a rusted factory, a scream of triumph as the glass exploded outwards—

“You like this, Allie?” he said.

Before I could answer, I saw his eyes squint in a tighter concentration.

When I looked up, a cluster of light separated from the urele in a burst.

I watched in disbelief as it transformed into the shape of a bird. The fiery plumage looked like it belonged to a bird of paradise, or a phoenix...his creation winged in and out of the liquid curtain of light like a living being. I let out a little gasp of surprise as it transformed into a dragon with white scales, watching it slide through the watery veil once more before it disappeared.

“You like it?” he said again.

“It’s amazing,” I said. “Like magic, Nenzi.”

“You like me?” he said.

“You know I do.”

Stepping closer, he gripped my wrist.

“Then no more husband with him,” he said. He stroked the inside of my arm with his fingers. “I will take your bargain...but not just for sex. You have to marry me. Marry
me,
instead of him.”

Terian laughed.

I looked at the kid, bewildered, then up at the sparking lights cascading to the floor. Sometimes it was easy to see him as a kind of neurotic adult; other times, he sounded and acted years younger than even his body suggested.

The lights above his head continued to shower us in sparks, making patterns against his pale skin, hitting the clay tiles like lava, pooling in streams on the floor. I saw the colors change as he spoke, shifting from dark greens and blues to a deep orange, shot through with gold and white.

I looked at his face.

“It’s too late, Nenzi,” I said.

I glanced at Terian in spite of myself. I saw the warning in his amber eyes.

“Would you like to explain...uncle Terry?” I said, giving him a hard look. “Or do you want junior here to uncollar me so we can get married?”

I saw him look between my eyes. He shrugged, as if conceding my point.

“I am sorry to say she is right,” he said easily. “Seers mate for life, my young friend...sadly, that ship has sailed.”

When I looked back at Nenzi, I saw his mouth harden.

The black eyes stared between mine. There was a bleakness there, a kind of desperate need. Something behind that expression made me pause.

He touched my arm again. His fingers clasped my skin.

“Stay with me,” he said. His voice turned gruff. “...or I’ll kill him.”

I glanced at Terian. He gave me a sideways look, but he was watching the boy intently. Looking back at Nenzi, I shook my head.

“Then you’ll kill me,” I said simply.

“Not if I wipe his mind!” he said angrily.

I stared between his eyes.

Caution returned to my voice, but I kept it firm.

“Nenzi...this won’t make me love you.”

“You can’t be alone forever,” he said. “You’re a seer...you need companions. You will forget about him...and I’ll be there.”

The implications behind this statement unnerved me. He’d clearly thought about this way too much. “No.” I said, my voice incredulous. “...I
won’t
forget him. More than that, I’ll hate you. And if you erase him, I’ll die.”

“Stop being married to him! I
will
kill him!”

I flinched, looking between his eyes.

“No,” I said.

A burst of light exploded over us, a small sun. When I looked back at the boy, his face had contorted in rage, his voice a command.

“Goddamn it, Allie!” he said. “I mean it! I know where he is!”

I stared at him, thrown again by the change in tone. He sounded forty again, and more than that, I recognized the look in those black eyes.

A horrible kind of suspicion grew in me.

Once it bloomed there, it was impossible to shove entirely from my mind.

Hearing Terian chuckle, I glanced up, seeing his chiseled face shadowed by the light cascading from above. His eyes still held caution, but he was listening to our conversation with a keen interest. Feeling my jaw harden, I blinked and shook my head, removing the boy’s fingers from my arm.

“No one gets what they want all the time,” I said. I glared at Terian. “We could be friends, if you let me go. I’ll help you find your own mate...”

Terian’s eyes turned to glass, focusing on mine.

Swallowing a little at the look there, I returned my gaze to Nenzi.

“No!” The boy’s eyes filled with tears, bewildering me. “No...I love
you.
I don’t want another female.
You
are my wife...”

“Nenzi...” I said, at a loss. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I watched you,” he said. “I saw you in that purple house. I saw your human mother...and your father. I
watched
you. You were like me...” At what must have been a blank look on my face, he burst out, “You threw the bad man. He killed those pigs, like
Wilbur
...you made him stop!”

I felt the blood drain from my face.

That time, I knew exactly what he was talking about. My uncle Stefan owned a farm in Nebraska. He had pigs, and when I went to visit I was seven years old, I had just finished reading
Charlotte’s Web.
Naturally, I’d asked him what he was going to do with the runts in his sow’s litter. I couldn’t believe his answer. I’d thought it was just a story. I couldn’t believe anyone actually
did
that, killed something just because it was small...

They all pretended after that Uncle Stefan had some kind of seizure, lost his balance maybe, or had been knocked over by a gust of wind. But I made him swear.

I made him swear he would never kill another runt pig.

Even my family didn’t know I’d threatened him.

“How could you know that?” My voice sharpened. “Nenzi...even Jon didn’t know about that. I never told anyone...”

Then, remembering my time in the cabin with Revik, I realized that wasn’t true anymore. I had told someone. One person, in fact.

My sense of unreality worsened.

I looked at Terian, fighting to calm myself. There was another explanation, there had to be. Something else occurred to me.

“My mother?” I said to Terian. “Did you get that from her? Did my uncle tell her?”

But Terian had a faint wrinkle to his brow as well. It could have been an act, but somehow, I didn’t think it was. Had he figured it out? Would he put together the pieces as he listened to Nenzi talk?

The boy took my hand again, stroking my skin with his small fingers, moving closer to me, touching my face.

“Please, Allie,” he said, soft. “I love you. You know I do.”

“You don’t love me.” My voice came out angry, maybe because I was afraid, or at the very least, completely and totally unnerved. “...And I’m not your wife. I’m someone else’s wife. You don’t even
know
me, Nenzi!”

When tears rose to his eyes once more, my voice grew even more harsh.

“...Whatever your deal is with me...it’s not real. You can’t read things off someone, read about their past and the facts of their life and think you
know
them—”

“You were my wife first!” he said.

I felt Terian staring at the boy along with me. He was watching me too, watching me react to the boy’s words. Nenzi’s voice had reflected that older person again, losing all trace of its child-like cadence.

Again I saw him clearly, as something other than the wonder child with the dynamite floating over his head. His pale face was flushed under the cascading light. His fists were clenched; he was breathing harder. His eyes held a dark flame, distorted by reflected light. I saw frustration there, but also fury.

“You’re mistaken,” I said.

“I’m not!” His eyes ignited to a pale green.

“Yes...you are! You’re confused...”

Terian touched my shoulder. When I looked up, the amusement on his sculpted face was gone; the quirk had disappeared from his full-lipped mouth. He was staring at the boy’s eyes. His own slid out of focus, aimed roughly at the space directly above the boy’s head.

That’s when I noticed the urele.

The light had turned the color of dark blood, red with black veins.

The rain-like beads washed down around us, reflecting against the boy’s pale skin before it bled to the floor. The pale green eyes stared at mine, lamp-like, sharp against the wash of deep red.

Looking at him, though, all I could feel was a sharp wave of compassion.

“Do you want me to pretend to care for you?” I said. “Are your expectations really that low? Someone
would
love you, Nenzi. But it can’t be me...”

Terian’s fingers dug violently into my shoulder, hard enough that I twisted away from his hand. When I looked back, I saw Nenzi staring between us.

He focused on my face.

The urele flashed white. Light exploded out of it.

It bled up the walls in a thick wave...and a thunderous crash of sound exploded on all four sides. Glass exploded outwards. Windows around us cracked and shattered. I realized in shock that those weren’t VR windows, but whatever lay behind them.

Even as I thought it, the illusion melted...

...The domed room with marble floors, the red rock cliff and birds, the blue sky and New Mexico landscape faded around where we stood. The waterfalls melted like a mirage, or a projector image when the light goes out.