Allie's War Season One (44 page)

“The succession order?”

It was my turn to stare. When I glimpsed images in his mind however, watching the different pieces of the Pyramid move up and down, trading places with one another under the top spot at the apex of the Pyramid, I found myself nodding. It was oddly reassuring that the thing I’d been looking at had a name.

“That’s right,” I said. “The succession order.”

“Why on earth would you be interested in that?” he said.

His voice remained sharp under the disbelief, and I saw what might have been wariness under that. For the first time in our conversation, I remembered he was an infiltrator, like Revik.

“We’ve never been able to see into that, love,” he said, shaking his head. “Why would you even look there? What do you expect to find, exactly?”

I smiled, but had to fight to keep the anger out of my voice.

“I know,” I said, smiling again. “It’s practically Revik’s mantra. It’s way over my head. I’m just a beginner...I get it. You don’t need to go there, Eli.”

“That’s not exactly what I meant, love.”

“So you don’t understand why I might be interested in the people who killed my mother?” I said, my own voice sharper. At his silence, I bit my lip. When he still didn’t say anything, I asked again, “So what do you think, Eli? Really. About the Bridge stuff, I mean.”

The hard look faded from his eyes, leaving the lighter one a clear blue.

“Love, I know you’re worried about reincarnation and all that,” he said, sighing. “But I don’t think that’s the point, really.”

“Then what
is
the point?”

“It’s about roles, see. Some are too important...some affect too many people to leave to chance. The Bridge is like that. There needs to be someone overseeing things, when something as heavy as a Displacement goes down.”

For a moment, I could only look at him, replaying what he’d said.

“You really believe all that stuff?” I said.

He grinned, resting his head on the chair’s back. “You sound surprised.”

“For a seer, you’re almost...normal. I had my hopes.”

Leaning forward, he placed his free hand, the one not gripping his beer, lightly on my thigh. “Does that mean you’re warming to me, then, love?”

Smiling, I shook my head, moving my legs out of reach of his fingers. “There’s a serious shortage of female seers on this ship, am I right?”

“Brutally small,” he agreed cheerfully. “And Chandre’s as likely to try for you as I am. But you’d be a peach anywhere, love. And that pain coming off you is simply...maddening. I don’t know how he can stand it...”

I felt my jaw harden again. I considered making a joke, trying to laugh it off, but decided there was no way it would come off.

I shrugged instead, folding my arms.

“Revik said that seer relationships were ‘complicated’...and largely biological. He said I shouldn’t take it personally. Is that true, too?”

Eliah snorted. “Bloody romantic.”

“Is it true, Eliah?”

He shrugged. “It’d be true in a way, I suppose. We’re a bit more biologically wired for monogamy than humans. But that’s not exactly the same thing, if you don’t mind my saying...and doesn’t have anything to do with who we choose as a mate. In fact, you could say the reverse is true.”

At my puzzled look, he shrugged with one hand, seer-fashion.

“The biological symptoms could be unsettling, I suppose. Especially if you didn’t know what was happening. Someone like you, who thought they were human, it’s got to be that much harder...” He frowned, studying my face. Leaning forward, he looked at my eyes.

“Gods. You’re not in love with him, are you, Allie-girl?”

I shook my head, but felt my chest clench a little anyway.

“I barely know him,” I said.

“That’s not what I asked.” Still studying my eyes, he added more cautiously, “The rest of us, we assumed you chose him for protection. Or, frankly, because he was the first male seer you met, and bad luck on you for that.”

He hesitated, laying a hand on my arm.

“But if you are in love with him. Well...that changes things. Won’t be so easy to pull out of this thing with him then, pet. And I’m sorry for that.” He caressed my arm. “I truly am.”

I focused on his eyes. They seemed to brighten strangely in the dim light of the cabin.

As they did, his words faded, as if someone twisted the dial on a radio.

Every other sound in the room seemed to amplify. Ambient noises grew deafening: the sound of the ocean through the propped-open door, the wind lightly banging the hanging blinds, the ticking of the old-fashioned clock on the wall. I heard an odd hitch in Eliah’s breath as he watched my face, his heart beating through his rib cage, slowing as he listened for my answer.

I had time to note I’d been kidding myself, telling myself I hadn’t known where he’d gone, or what he’d intended to do.

I got the chance to think the timing was ironic...

Then everything in the room dimmed. 

I should have known I’d feel it when it happened. From what Eliah told me, along with what happened with Jaden...even from what little Revik had said, in his own vague way...I really should have known.

I should have known a lot of things, but they still always managed to surprise me.

19

BREAKDOWN

...I STAND ON a rock bluff, above a valley riddled with spider-web cracks. Wind tunnels between chasms. Everything is gone. All trees, animals, plants are dust, blown away.

I’m alone. But not really. Not really alone.

...He raises himself up on his arms, sweating, reading her, watching her eyes as he brings her to the edge. I see the tattooed writing on his arm, sweat sticking his black hair to his neck and forehead as he moves over her, his arms tensed as he adjusts the angle of his body. He holds her still, fingers clenched in blond hair as he arches deeper...deep enough to pause when she cries out, holding some part of himself back, going in with his mind so he can feel it when...

She climaxes, gripping his arms. Pain ripples off him as he watches.

Then it worsens.

Red sunlight shines behind my lids, but that pale, bird-less sky fades.

I feel him fighting. With himself, with me. He loses control and then he’s asking me, winding some part of himself deeper into my light.

He pulls me inside of him, even with her lying between us.

...and he’s inside both of us now, and I feel his relief mixed with frustration, a kind of horror at what he’s doing even as he asks me again. He wants me now, more than he can tell me, more than I can let myself feel. It hurts, that want, but I’m lost inside the conflict on him too. Fear hovers behind desire, masked in anger at me for forcing him to revisit that place, to remember.

I would turn him back...make him into that thing he hates.

He is sure of it. He feels it with every part of his being.

I would turn him back, if he let me.

Above, the Pyramid rotates. There is more to see.

For now, alone...further back, below.

He would remember.

“HEY.” THE WOMAN fought to slow her breathing. She realized she’d never gotten his name. “Hey...are you okay?”

His pale skin wore the same sheen that matted her blond hair to her neck and shoulders, stuck the cotton sheet to her legs. She clutched at him, unable to help it. Her whole body still vibrated from what he’d done to her...seemingly again and again and again. He’d been unnervingly focused as he brought her to orgasm, but by the end, he’d surprised her by being verbal, too.

A lot more verbal than she would have guessed from their brief conversation in the bar.

He’d warned her it would be fast, and yet, there’d been something vulnerable about him once he let himself go. That vulnerability edged into a near-violence at times, but he hadn’t hurt her. He’d removed her clothes before they were all the way in the room, and she could tell he’d been holding back even then, using his mouth to buy them time, pushing her to talk to him.

Once he’d really started, she doubted he’d been aware of her at all.

When he finally came, he’d been nearly begging her.

Or begging someone, perhaps, to do...something.

Now he just lay there, like a dead person.

She wondered how she’d let him talk her into coming here. Her husband got them separate cabins—his idea, of course, to give them “more space” and because he claimed he couldn’t sleep with her snoring—but he had no compunction about stopping by when the mood struck him, or if he and the dance instructor had one of their spats. She cringed at the thought that she might have to explain a naked, male seer in her bed.

Although, really, it would serve him right.

“Hey.” She laid a hand on his chest. His skin felt cold. She kept her voice light, trying to smile. “Who’s Allie?”

She saw his expression change, just before he closed his eyes. She couldn’t help wondering though. A girlfriend? Did they even date?

Looking away, he shifted his weight on the mattress.

She caressed his hair. “Are you sick?”

He raised a hand, pushing hers off. She watched in disbelief as he wiped his face, doubting what she’d seen. Then his breathing changed, and she couldn’t deny what she heard. He was crying. He wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand.

“Hey,” she said, a little alarmed. “What’s going on?”

When he spoke, his voice made her jump. She’d forgotten the accent.

“I’m married,” he said.

A surprised laugh caught in her throat. She tried to keep it out of her voice.

“So am I,” she said. “I thought that was the point.”

He looked at her. His pale eyes reflected light shining from under the door, almost like a cat’s eyes. Again, she remembered he wasn’t human. He stared back as if she were just as alien to him. Then he sat up. She watched him feel around on the floor for his pants, pulling them up over his legs and looping then hooking his belt. Standing, he found his shirt and drew it over his head, and now she felt emotion waver off him, clear as a scent. It was self-loathing.

She pulled the damp sheet tighter around herself. “I’m sorry,” she said.

He shook his head. “It’s not your fault.”