Allie's War Season One (126 page)

My scream echoed in the hollow space, sounding like an animal.

Someone else hit me then...in the face.

It hurt. I blinked back tears and found myself looking up, trying to focus on a man’s face. I didn’t know the features that stared back at me, couldn’t focus on them enough to make meaning of them.

Yet, something there was familiar. Whatever it was, it was almost enough to snap me out. I groped for him, trying to push him away, but he only tightened his hold. I saw him looking at my body. I saw a faint smile...

Then small arms slid around my neck, tightening before I could focus on their owner.

“Allie!”

He nearly strangled me. His eyes glowed, sharp in the dark, blinding me. I wanted so badly for it to be Revik, but I already knew it wasn’t.

“It’s all right,” he said. “You’re all right, Allie...”

I was dreaming. I had to be dreaming.

The boy looked back at me, eyes wide in a round face. His lip bled.

I’d punched him in the mouth.

“Nenzi,” I managed.

The man next to him visibly jumped, staring at me.

I barely noticed. Fighting to breathe, I grabbed the front of the boy’s shirt with both hands, to assure myself he was real. “Nenzi, where’s Revik?”

The round face grew suddenly hard.

He turned, looking at the man kneeling on my other side. Reaching up one hand, I touched my throat tentatively, looking around the room, looking for Revik. Every part of me hurt now. I reached out with my light, trying to find him. Shadows flitted around me, nearly physical...slithering between us.

Above that, I saw deep clouds, a golden valley I recognized...

I heard sounds. A thud of flesh on flesh.

I screamed...

Hands, clawing at the dark, in the dirt...broken fingers, bleeding out.

I tried to move, to crawl in the direction I could feel him, but pain crippled me, and the blond man held me by the throat. I’d never been claustrophobic before, but it felt as if the building walls were closing in on me. I felt as if they might bury me, leave me alone in the dark forever and...

Hunched by the wall near the bathroom, I fought for air, ignoring the fingers holding my wrists, the airplanes flashing across the sky behind my lids. Bombs fell in the darkness. Buildings burned.

I saw monks screaming, their robes on fire...

The boy spoke. His voice was barely a whisper, but I heard it above the sounds of helicopters, shouts, fire...the scream of airplanes overhead.

“Allie?”

I stared at that rounded face, fighting tears.

“Allie?” His fingers grasped at mine.
Allie...are you hurt?

I watched his eyes brighten. I knew who this was, but he couldn’t be here...he’d been dead for nearly a hundred years. Somehow, I wasn’t afraid, though. The feeling that rose in me was closer to relief.

“Nenzi?” I said. “Is it really you?”

His light flared, blinding me in the Barrier.

I felt my recognition touch him, nearly incapacitate him with feeling, even as his relief expanded over me. Tears rolled down his face. His mouth contorted as he looked at me from my face down to my feet, slowly, as if memorizing every part of me. He looked at me with near reverence...no, that wasn’t it. He looked at me with love. A love so intense it hurt...it filled my eyes with tears.

This had to be a dream. I was back in Tarsi’s cave. Everything that had come after...swimming in the river, the horse with the red face, Revik’s eyes glowing with their own light, making love in front of the fireplace, our soft confessions in the dark, everything I’d felt and been...it couldn’t be real.

“Nenzi?” I said again. “Where’s Revik?”

The small seer’s light touched mine, expanding over me until I couldn’t breathe. Feeling a sudden burst of protectiveness, I motioned him towards me.

“Nenzi! Come here!”

...when something hit me in the thigh.

It felt like a sledgehammer. My leg seemed to smash apart, even as force threw me to my back. I cried out in shock.

...He couldn’t move.

It was more than pain.

Beyond the pain was the other. The knowledge that he was down, that he wouldn’t get back up. He called my name, and I heard him, clearly, in my head...

GET OUT ALLIE! GET OUT NOW PLEASE! USE THE TELEKINESIS AND GO! PLEASE BABY! PLEASE!

I groaned, my back pressed to the wall.

I hadn’t moved. Clutching my leg, I tried to understand what had happened...but my leg physically felt the same. I couldn’t see anything wrong with it. My light scattered like errant flame, useless.

For what felt like a long time, I sat there, as if paralyzed.

Then the pain hit for real. I fought to move, to stand up, and agony ripped up my back. I writhed, gasping, trying to use the wall for leverage.

“Revik!” Tears came to my eyes. “Gods...what did you do to him?”

Nenzi was with me, clutching me with small hands.

His pale, sunless face nearly glowed...it looked anguished. His eyes continued to shimmer at me like iridescent fish, but widened to searchlights in his head. He clutched my hair, kneading it in his fingers. The fingers of his other hand caressed my face, my shoulder, touching my cheeks.

“Allie!” He gripped me tighter.
I’m sorry...I’m sorry, Allie!

I touched the boy’s hands. He was real. He was really there.

Tears filled my eyes. “What did you do?”

Allie...don’t move! He won’t hurt you! He promised!

I followed his gaze to the larger shape squatting beside him.

My mind felt suddenly much, much clearer. This was real. I wasn’t just lost in a nightmare.

They’d taken Revik.

A sparking sound rose. I recognized it as an organic yisso torch.

Staring up, I focused on his face. The man with the white-blond hair glided smoothly to his feet, standing over us. Tall—nearly seven feet—and Scandinavian-looking, he could have been human but for his height. Focusing on his amber-colored eyes, I understood suddenly why he’d felt familiar. My skin turned cold as recognition filtered through my light.

I knew who he was. I knew...even though I didn’t know this particular body.

I lunged at the bureau where I knew Revik kept a gun.

The Scandinavian darted after me. With a cat-like speed, his hand gripped my ankle, yanking me roughly to the floor. I landed hard on my stomach. I tried to kick his hand away, but he dragged me back.

I fought with my light, reaching for that folding sensation, trying to find it, recalling jumps with Tarsi...what I’d done to Maygar...

The giant Terian punched me in the face.

The boy turned on him, hissing.

“Sorry! Sorry!” The Scandinavian held up his hands. “But you saw what she was doing! You don’t want her killing us, do you?”

I struggled with my light again, trying again to control it. I pulled my body across the floor until his fingers gripped my ankle, dragging me back.

“Terian...” I barely managed the name.

I looked at the bureau, then around at the room.

They’d taken Revik. They’d
taken
him.

Terian caught me by the neck.

“You won’t like this much,” he muttered. “Neither will he.” He glanced at the boy. “But your mind will start working again eventually, my dear...so I’m afraid we have no choice.”

I fought him, frantic now. I understood, finally, how badly I’d blown my chance.

The collar wasn’t activated.

I put every ounce of my energy towards using the telekinesis, wanting nothing more than to throw him off me like I had Maygar...throw him into a wall, break his back, make his head explode. But the reality was, I’d never been able to invoke it at will, despite months of practicing with every seer in the compound. I fought my way clear of the Scandinavian’s giant hands, tried to heave myself towards the bureau once I felt his fingers loosen, but he caught the collar easily.

I felt the boy stiffen, but Terian gave him a sharp look.

“We talked about this,” he said. “Nenzi...you said you understood! You agreed with me, that it was necessary...just for a short while.”

I saw anger rise to the boy’s eyes, but he didn’t move when Terian bent over me again.

I shrieked when he turned me around, hitting out at him with my fists, but Terian caught my hair in one hand, yanking my head forward. He held me expertly, bending my neck until I couldn’t move. He held me against his chest...ignoring my hands frantically shoving and hitting at him. Then he pinched a nerve in my arm that paralyzed me briefly.

I grew completely still.

So did he. Light flashed from the retinal scanner as he hung over my neck.

I heard a click.

...and Terian released me, gliding smoothly to his feet.

“There, there,” he murmured. “That wasn’t so bad.”

Teeth bit into my skin. I let out a shocked cry, clawing at my neck.

Whatever it was dug into my flesh...then burrowed deeper. I shrieked as it worked past muscle to bone...wrapping around my spinal column. The strands wormed their way around every contour, coiling around nerves at the base of my neck. I started to shriek again, but Terian crouched, grabbing my arm.

“Be silent!” he hissed. “I’ll kill him! I’ll kill your mate! I won’t hesitate, Allie...so do not test me in this!”

Gasping, I met his gaze, forced silent by his words.

A shudder ran through me as it ended...the cold strands locked into place.

The sharp touch of metal on bone not only hurt, it had a nauseating flavor that forced a gasp from my lips. I hung my head, sucking in breaths, swallowing down the bile that filled my mouth.

“Fuck,” I gasped.

I gripped the metal in my fingers, panicking as I realized I couldn’t see.

I couldn’t see my light.

The room was flat...at once dead and frighteningly two-dimensional. The collar no longer hurt...not other than that sickening feeling of metal flush against bone. I blinked my eyes, trying to focus. I realized I was trying to scan...couldn’t. I cried out, struggling against it.

I couldn’t feel him anymore. He was gone.

Before, when I thought I’d lost him, he’d still been there in the background. Every time I looked for him, I could feel him...I could find him in some measure at least, however faint. He’d never been gone entirely before. Never. Even before I met him in the flesh, he’d been there, like an imaginary friend.

Until now.

Gasping, I fought full-fledged terror.

The anxiety I’d felt whenever he left the room...it was nothing compared to this. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I didn’t feel like a human or a seer, or remotely sane. If I’d known in which direction he lay, I would have crawled over glass. I yanked on the collar with both hands, screaming. I fought the Scandinavian Terian and the boy as if my life were at stake, but my mind was nearly blank.

Terian pried my fingers off the collar, one by one.

I felt the cold shock of more metal as he forced my wrists behind my back, locking cuffs around each one. I felt a sharp sting as a needle sank into my throat. He pinched a nerve in my neck with one hand when I started to struggle more violently...and I slumped there, breathing too hard. I didn’t move as he finished pushing down the stopper on the syringe.

I looked at the boy.

The world remained dead.

The drug seeped a kind of artificial calm that worked over the edges of my awareness, but it didn’t help. A feeling of vulnerability came over me...so profound I couldn’t stop breathing, even after I was hyperventilating.

I yanked against the cuffs, struggling irrationally to get them off.

I lay my neck on the door jamb, trying to rub off the collar, oblivious now to the pain, to the vulnerable feeling in my neck...it was nothing compared to how lost I felt. I hooked the metal ring on a piece of wood, bracing my feet and yanking until my neck hurt for real. I felt it tearing where it penetrated my flesh.