Allie's War Season One (150 page)

“Goddamn it.” His voice was furious. “...I told you she needed a doctor!” He gestured towards me. “I thought you were going to handle it, Rook!”

I saw the Scandinavian exchange looks with Elan, and realized Maygar’s words were aimed at him. I was struggling to track this.

Maygar knew Terian? Well enough to yell at him?

Maygar glared at the Scandinavian. “What are you doing letting that little freak paw at her?” he said. “Take her to a doctor...now!”

The Scandinavian looked at me.

Instead of grinning, as I’d expected, his brows drew together in a frown. The frown looked so sincere I found myself staring at him.

As I did, it occurred to me that he might actually be erasing his own memories, to keep the boy from feeling what he’d done.

“Your boy’s right,” he said to Raven, stepping forward.

“You see,” she said. “She wants to die.”

“No,” Terian murmured. “I don’t think so...” He raised his voice. “Nenzi?” He sounded deeply concerned. “What happened to Alyson? Is she all right? It looks like she’s bleeding...”

Nenzi put up his arm, shielding me from the three of them.

“Did you do this?” Nenzi asked Terian. “Did you?”

“My friend! Of course not! What happened to her?”

“Tell me the truth!”

“I did not harm her, Nenz! I promise you!”

Nenzi looked at me. Biting my lip, I nodded.

“He’s telling the truth,” I said. “I don’t think it was him, Nenzi.”

The boy was still looking at me when Terian reached for the cell door. I flinched back, unable to help myself, clutching Nenzi’s arm. Looking at me, then back at Terian, the smaller seer’s voice turned into a snarl.

“Stay out! Don’t come near her!”

Terian hesitated, his hand on the door. He looked at me, then at the boy.

“I swear to you, Nenzi! I did not do this! Did she tell you I did?”

“If she had, you’d already be dead,” Nenzi said.

Raven turned on Terian too, her voice angry. “Well, perhaps if you hadn’t
shot
him, left him chained in the middle of nowhere to die...” She clicked at Terian sharply. “No food, no water, lying naked in the sun! The bombing in Seertown may have delayed his rescue by days! He’s probably
dead,
Terry. She’s probably dying because he is already dead. You know that, don’t you?”

Terian sighed, hands on his hips. “Raven, look at her! She’s not starving to death...she’s been beaten! Are you blind?”

But I barely heard his words. I felt my chest clench. Pain filled me, so physical I was sure I was having a heart attack. I clutched my chest, fighting to breathe, sure I couldn’t breathe...

“
Du relante d’gaos
...you’ve done it now,” Raven said. “Look at her. She’s going to have a heart attack...”

“
I’ve
done it?” Terian said, incredulous. “Who was just ranting about the death of her mate?”

“She needs a fucking doctor,” Maygar snarled.

He slammed a hand against the bars of the cage.

That, and the emotion in his voice brought me briefly back.

I looked up, wanting any distraction, anything to keep me from the thought of Revik lying naked on that plateau, vultures eating whatever was left after he slowly died of exposure and dehydration. I couldn’t get my head around it or away from it. It was like a sickness eating at me from the inside out, as soon as the image solidified. I couldn’t get rid of it...or get close to it without feeling like I was going to start screaming...

Terian told me Revik and I hadn’t completed the bond. He said it would hurt like hell if Revik died, but it shouldn’t kill me. He told the boy it would kill me because he had his own reasons for wanting Revik alive, and it was pretty clear Nenzi would kill Revik without a strong incentive.

When he said it, it felt true.

The idea that I might live through this only made everything that much worse.

I was owned by the United States government. Terian and the boy would wear me down. Nenzi was right, I would eventually bond with him, for lack of anything else.

If I didn’t die, this would never end. Never.

For all I knew, Vash and Balidor were dead, too...and Jon, and Cass.

I started to cry. Everything hurt. Even without my light, I wanted to die.

Maygar was staring at me, disbelief in his eyes, mixed with a fear that threw me, that was hard to look at. I remembered what Revik had told me, his certainty that Maygar had feelings for me, but I still couldn’t quite believe it. How was he even here, with these people? The last I knew, he was in some kind of coma.

Had he worked for Terian all along?

“Traitor,” I muttered, wiping my eyes, staring at him. “Fucking traitor...”

He blinked in surprise, but his predominant expression remained shock.

Terian made a conciliatory gesture towards Maygar with one hand.

“Well? If you insist on being the strapping young buck. Take care of it.” He raised his voice. “Nenzi, this young male is right...we need to take her to the medical facilities. Will you permit him to pass?”

Nenzi looked at me. When I nodded, reluctantly, he frowned.

He looked at Maygar. The look in his eyes was narrow, appraising.

“All right,” he said finally.

Maygar’s jaw clenched. He looked at the boy, hearing the same warning in his words as I had. Nenzi’s arm remained in front of me; his hand still clutched my leg protectively...or maybe possessively, I didn’t know anymore, or care.

He hadn’t hurt me, not directly, and the rest of these people had.

As if he’d been reading my thoughts, Maygar looked from the boy back to me. He stared at the small hand on my thigh, and for an instant, disgust tainted his expression. I felt my jaw harden, but I only looked away, resting my chin on my knee. Nenzi glanced at me, caressing my face.

Maygar opened the door, entering the cage.

Nenzi gripped my leg as he approached us.

“Don’t hurt her,” he said. “Please. I’ll kill you if you do...but please, don’t...”

Maygar didn’t bother to answer, but crossed the depth of the cage. Reaching the two of us, he moved the boy out of the way, his hands not particularly gentle. Nenzi took it from him...maybe because he could feel Maygar’s intentions, or maybe for some other reason.

Crouching next to me, Maygar dragged the thin blanket off the cot behind us. Carefully, he wrapped it around my back, covering me.

Somehow, the simple gesture brought tears to my eyes again.

“Allie?” He touched my face, brushing hair out of my eyes. “Allie, I’m going to pick you up, okay?”

I looked at him. For an instant, he was my friend again, the person I’d joked around with and drank with and tried to fix up with Cass on the train to Russia. Behind my eyes, I glimpsed the look on his face the last time I’d seen him...that hard, hunter’s look, the sweat on his upper lip.

I wanted to ask him why he’d done it.

Instead, hearing his question again in my head, I nodded.

I didn’t move as he slid his arms under my knees and upper back...and lifted. Briefly, I felt something close to relief as he brought me up in a curl against his chest. I felt his heart beating louder under my ear. He felt real though, like a person. Not like one of Terian’s animated corpses, or the woman with those cold, lifeless eyes, or the boy who should have been dead a hundred years ago. His hands were shaking a little, I noticed. Holding me tightly against his chest, he carried me out of the cell.

I caught another glimpse of Terian staring at me, his amber eyes concentrated, as if I were a puzzle he needed to solve.

Then Maygar’s shoulder cut off my view.

When I looked down, I saw Nenzi trailing along beside us.

27

UNWILLING

“LOOK UP.” THE flashlight shone in Revik’s face. “Right.” He turned his head. “Left.” He turned it again.

He felt the scanner with his light, knowing it was tracking the shape of his bones inside his flesh, tracking his teeth against dental records, both in local law enforcement and SCARB. He knew the organics in the body skin he wore should be able to provide a false map to the machine, based on the young unwilling’s outline, as should the detailed prosthetics he wore, also embedded with organics.

He shouldn’t be worried.

Yet he knew if he hadn’t been in the suit, his jacked-up heart rate likely would have set off the scanner’s warning light already.

He’d done this kind of thing before. Normally, he could keep all of his basic body functions under control; it was entry-level infiltrator training, not even an advanced skill. But he could feel himself getting closer to her. He could feel it in every part of his body...enough that he knew he’d probably broken out in a sweat.

He hadn’t factored that in.

He shoved it from his mind. It was too late now.

His light had been tougher to disguise. He had a number of seers holding pieces of it from the Barrier, but to get past security, he was relying on Wreg’s team to generate a temporary field mimicking the light of the unwilling whose identity he borrowed—a superimposition of key markers and structural configurations to fool the seers working the front gate.

It was a technology he’d only heard postulated while working for the Seven, but Wreg and his team seemed confident they could pull it off, at least long enough to get him inside.

It was akin to creating a mobile construct around Revik’s person.

Revik hadn’t asked too many questions about the mechanics of how such a thing might be done, but he wasn’t stupid. Normally, in order to function properly, a construct had to be anchored in significant physical mass. A building. A ship, if large enough. A mountain, or any large deposit of dense stone. Even a body of water might work, under certain circumstances.

For a mobile construct to work, it would need to be anchored in the Barrier.

Given that the vast majority of Barrier beings didn’t operate directly on Earth, that left the Dreng, the same beings that once provided stability for the Rooks’ Pyramid.

Revik didn’t ask. And since no one offered him a different explanation, he left it alone.

The guard’s scanner clicked off. The human spoke nonverbally into his headset, then looked down at their driver, Wreg. Using his fingers, the guard motioned for him to take the car through the gate.

Revik felt his heartbeat quicken.

One barrier down.

They reached the East Wing entrance, where they’d been instructed to enter, both by the client and by the unwilling Revik was now impersonating. Checking out the security markers he could see with his eyes alone, it occurred to him that he’d never actually been inside the structure before, not even as a tourist.

He glanced up the sides of the building. He’d barely taken in the walls and glimpse of garden and trees when the car came to a full stop. He couldn’t see the more famous porticos of the north and south entrances or the garden on the south side, not with the building in the way, but the impact of the structure and what it represented still hit him harder than he’d expected.

It was strange to think that Galaith had lived here.