Allie's War Season Three (124 page)

Glancing at me, he laughed, in surprise as much as anything.

"No more toys for you," I said with mock sternness. "If we have them, you and your band of ruffians will want to
use
them, and I'm voting on no more actual
shooting
wars for us for awhile. At least not until we get back to the hotel, okay?" When I saw Wreg looking out the opposite window, a similar glint in his eyes and light, I sighed a little. "...Make that down,
boys.
Seriously, if we have to shoot our way back into New York, I'm staying in the sub..."

Revik smiled a little, but his eyes didn't leave the window. Neither did Wreg's. Looking between the two of them, I could tell my words hadn't done jack-all.

"Isn't the armory at the hotel enough?" I protested.

"Can't hurt to have more," Revik said, eyeing a group of soldiers in full-body organic armor, probably with full camouflage capability, or so I felt from his light. “...Especially given what’s going on.”

"Always good to have options, princess," Wreg seconded, his eyes on what looked like some kind of portable flier gliding through the night sky like a mechanical bat. "...We could just look around some, couldn't we, Nenz?" he said to Revik, using his older name, the one I'd never gotten in the habit of using. "Take an informal inventory...assess any gaps?"

He smacked Revik's chest with the back of his hand, pretty much right over my head.

"...What do you say?" he grinned. "A quick shopping trip?"

Revik fit the headset back over his ear and triggered it with his mind, giving me a faint smile when I rolled my eyes at both of them.

"In charge, my ass," I muttered.

His smile widened, right before he winked at me. He waited for the other end to pick up, then began talking almost at once.

"Hey, yeah...what's our ETD?" He nodded a little as the person on the other end, presumably Balidor, must have answered. "Good. So Wreg and I...we have time to do a little acquisitions scouting?"

There was a pause. He laughed at whatever the person on the other end said.

"We'll behave. I'll keep Wreg away from the seer quarters." Nodding at something else the person said, he glanced at me. "...Yeah. I'm going to try. I'm thinking the answer is probably no, though."

"You bet your ass," I said, refolding my arms. Revik was getting a little too good at charming everyone into getting what he wanted, even Balidor. He was definitely a lot better at it than I was, these days at least.

"Hardly," he mouthed at me, still listening to the person on the other end. He glanced down at me then, raising his eyebrows suggestively before covering the mic with his hand, leaning closer to my ear. "You know I do whatever you ask of me, wife..."

Wreg grunted a laugh.

I rolled my eyes, but snorted a half-laugh, too. "Gee. Thanks a lot for that, husband. And no, by the way. You don't."

Wreg laughed louder that time, shoving my arm good-naturedly.

Revik only smiled at me in answer, tugging my hair before he glanced at Wreg, who was already zipping up the front of his armored vest. I watched as he eased Jon out of his lap and onto the seat next to him a few seconds later. Revik started to climb over me to the door, his hand reaching for his headset. He pounded on the glass separating us from the driver's section, where Jorag sat next to Jax and Neela. Once the three of them looked back, Revik motioned with his hand for them to stop the car. Neela grinned at once, glancing at me long enough to roll her eyes. Clearly, she knew exactly what and who was behind this little detour.

The Humvee rolled to a stop, not far from a second line of tanks.

I watched the ones behind us drive around, saw white faces pressed to the glass, probably wondering what the heck we were doing.

"...We'll be there," Revik assured the person on the other end of his headset. "In and out, promise. No complications."

"Right," I muttered.

Laughing a little, Revik clicked off the headset even as he reached for the door handle, leaning over to give me a quick kiss before he hit through the four-key sequence to open the locks. The second he opened the door, I was hit with a sharp blast of cold air, shocking enough that I flinched back, shielding my face with a hand. Being inside the sealed space, I hadn’t realized just how freezing cold it was outside the Humvee’s shell.

I recovered enough from the shock of weather to give Wreg an irritated look, however, as he smacked me on the shoulder in the process of climbing over me after Revik.

"Don't you want to come?" the Chinese seer asked. "I'm sure I felt Nenz thinking about it. Besides, we might need more, shall we say...
energetic
backup. Right, Nenz?"

Revik glanced back at the two of us, looking first at Wreg, then at me. The wind blew his black hair sideways in a sharp gust, but his eyes remained intently on me, as if he were thinking about Wreg’s words. After a pause, however, he grinned, as if remembering something. He clicked over the sound of the wind as the grin widened, right before he smacked Wreg affectionately on the shoulder.

"Brilliant," he seconded. "She's coming." He crooked a finger at me, his gaze pointed above the smile. "I'd forgotten I don't have to ask. You gave me permission to teach you again, love. That means I get to order you around...in this area, at least."

"What?" I said. “No, it doesn’t.”

"You're coming, wife. You need the field training."

"Field training?" I snorted. "In what? Stealing?"

Wreg laughed. I glanced over the armored vests and pants both of them wore.

"Seriously?" I said. "This is how you're going to use your teaching authority, husband?"

Revik nodded, clicking his fingers for me to hurry up. He glanced at his watch. "Come on. I told Balidor we'd be quick. Anyway..." He motioned overhead. “There’s a storm coming. We should get moving.”

"You know when I gave you permission, this wasn't exactly what I had in mind––"

But Revik went on as if I hadn't spoken. "...and Wreg's right. We might need manipulation as a back-up, especially if we're going to do this as quietly as I promised 'Dor."

"That is a flimsy, flimsy excuse," I informed him, clicking sharper. "Even for you. And a total abuse of your authority..."

He only grinned at me, motioning more emphatically for me to leave the armored vehicle. "Stop whining and come on. Let's manipulate things, baby.” He grinned wider. “You can work out your anger at me back at the hotel..."

Feeling a curl of heat off him, even through the distance between us, I glanced up at the cloud-darkened sky, frowning. I watched Wreg grin at me, too, right before he tugged his shorter-than-before but still long hair back in a ponytail and wrapped an organic clip around it. I glanced back to where Jon slept, wondering if I should wake him. Before I'd focused on him fully, I remembered the disease with a jolt. Realizing my door hung wide open, I tensed until I saw that Wreg had already put the oxygen mask over his face. It fogged mildly with each of his breaths, but his eyes remained closed, his hands resting by his face on the long bench seat. I wondered how Wreg had managed to do all of that before Revik opened the door.

Maybe I was a little okay with Jon and Wreg being together.

Wreg snorted louder at that.

"I'm honored, princess." He motioned me out of the car, too, his gestures more impatient than Revik's. "Come on. It’s fucking freezing out here. Your brother is fine. Jorag knows I'd kill him, if he acquired so much as a new scratch while we're gone..."

He raised his voice for that last part, and Jorag tapped his middle finger pointedly against the driver's side window, one of the few that wasn't shaded out.

Glancing back, the dark-haired seer winked at me as he did it.

Laughing in spite of myself, I gave in, climbing down from the Humvee and slamming the heavy, organic door behind me. As soon as I did, another blast of cold air hit me, making me suck in a breath. Wreg really hadn’t been kidding.

“No,” he said, blowing on his hands and stomping his feet. “...I was not, princess.”

Since none of us had changed clothes since that field op in Argentina, we didn't really look all that different from the soldiers running into and away from the cutting wind, scattered like black ants across different segments of the tarmac. They’d probably just dismiss us as private contractors if they saw us, unless we got caught in the actual act of stealing something. Yanking my hair back in a ponytail of my own, I tied it off using a rubber band instead of the clip traditionally worn by seer males, which at least kept it from whipping at my face. By the time I reached Revik's side, the Humvee with Jorag, Jax, Neela and my brother had already left us behind, rolling down the flat expanse of asphalt after the others, until it blended in with all the other armored vehicles.

"So what are we stealing, boys?" I asked the two of them, relieved to be out of the car in spite of myself. "Do we flip for first pick?"

Revik, who'd still been looking at me with that predatory glint in his eyes, smiled. Smacking Wreg on the chest, he walked in the direction of the nearest set of buildings, his gait falling into that curious, cat-like stride that I couldn't help following with my eyes.

Resigning myself that this was Wreg and Revik, and that this was their idea of
fun
, I followed with a sigh.

"WHERE
ARE THEY?" Jon said, his voice distorted through the oxygen mask. "I mean, you're kidding, right? You didn’t really give Revik the thumb's up on this?"

Balidor shrugged with one hand, his eyes distracted, and still focused on Chandre. Wind howled outside the thin, organic plating of the hangar-like storage area, rattling the metal surface even as it created an eerie, echoing moan that lengthened into whispering cries as it traveled through the high-ceilinged space. Where Jon and Balidor stood was protected from that wind and relatively quiet, but still, Jon found himself glancing periodically out the tall doorway, squinting to see the growing squall in the dark. The air felt charged, as if heavy with unexpressed electricity. He could almost taste the copper in his mouth.

“We can’t turn down free supplies, Jon,” Balidor said after another beat.

“Free?” Jon snorted. “Free to who?”

“Free to us.”

Balidor said the last without inflection, still watching Chandre.

Jon followed his gaze to the East Indian-looking seer, who stood about ten meters away, hands on her slim hips as she listened to a woman in a SCARB jacket. The new woman, the one Jon didn’t know, had strongly Asian features and wore a dark blue skirt suit under the oversized windbreaker, accessorized with a designer watch, hoop earrings and Italian high heels. The woman's high-cheekboned face and gold-colored eyes marked her as a seer pretty much right off, but something else about her features made Jon stare, too. It took a moment longer for that secondary association to click. Then it did.

The seer looked like Cass.

Feeling a harder emotion get lodged somewhere in his chest, Jon looked back at Balidor. Waiting for the seer to turn, he shivered from another gust of icy wind from the open doors, even wearing the thick, armored vest and combat pants. Rubbing his arms, he glanced up as the patter of rain started again, hitting the upper roof and echoing like shots from a few million nail guns on the organic overhang.

"Hey," he said, waving a hand to get the seer's attention. "Seriously, man...you let them go wandering around a U.S. military base, looking for shiny toys? Now? With all of this..." He gestured out at the storm, then around them vaguely, although at what, in the latter case, he wasn't sure. "...Going on?"

Balidor rolled his eyes. A smile played around his lips.