Allie's War Season Three (193 page)

Jon moved mechanically, running towards the sound.

He didn’t want to. He didn’t want to be here at all, not anymore, but he couldn’t stop himself from running any more than he suspected Revik himself would have been able to stop himself vaulting up those steps, even to his probable death.

When Jon stopped in the doorway to his mother’s bedroom, his eyes took a moment to adjust to the gloom. He saw a lamp broken in the corner, what looked like a dried smear of blood. Then his eyes found the bed, and saw Revik cradling a form in his arms, his face buried across the front of her.

Allie lay there, naked, her body limp where he held her.

Jon found his eyes drawn to her body, looking at the lower half of her, where someone had obviously cut her open, stitching her up afterwards and covering the wound with a transparent sealant without bothering to so much as throw a sheet over her naked body.

Bile rose to his throat as he looked at the wound, as he realized what it meant, along with a horror so intense he couldn’t think at all for a moment. He nearly jumped out of his skin when Wreg pushed past him, kneeling down next to Revik and wrapping a thick arm around the Elaerian’s back.

“Nenz!” Wreg said, shaking him a little. “Nenz...gods, brother. She’s not dead!”

Revik only held her tighter.

Jon felt a pulse from him, and found himself thinking that if Revik still had access to the telekinesis, Wreg would have been thrown across the room by now. As it was, if he wouldn’t have had to release Allie to do it, Jon suspected Revik would have shoved him off violently just to get him away.

“Nenzi...” Wreg combed his fingers through the other man’s dark hair, practically cooing to him, rubbing his back. “Nenz...we have to get her out of here. Now. She’s not dead, but she could be soon. We have to move her...”

That time, the infiltrator’s words seemed to penetrate.

Revik looked up at him, then back at Allie, his eyes seeming to be lost, bright with tears but without a single thought living inside them. He let Wreg prise Allie out of his fingers and arms, and knelt there, watching, as the larger seer wrapped her body in a sheet, picking her up as carefully as if she’d been made of glass.

Jon fought to speak. When he finally did, his voice came out unnaturally loud, as if he’d just broken something. As if he’d dropped a porcelain vase inside a quiet church.

“What’s wrong with her?” he said.

Wreg shot him a warning look, glancing warily at Revik.

Don’t call attention to yourself right now, brother...
he sent to him, barely a whisper.
He’s totally fucking cracked...don’t do it. For the love of the gods, brother, hear me on this...

What’s wrong with her?
Jon asked, in his mind.

Jon was trying to scan her, to get closer to her light, but Wreg shoved him off, violently that time, and without any attempt to soften what he’d done.

Don’t fucking touch her, Jon! I mean it. You can’t reach her anyway...she’s gone...

Swallowing, Jon nodded, almost without realizing he’d done it.
Gone? What does that mean, gone? Where is she?

Wreg sent a pulse of grief at him, but didn’t answer in words.

What’s wrong with her?
Jon asked again.
Wreg, you said she’s not dead...

They put her on wires,
Wreg sent, his light still heavy with that numbing grief.
Highest setting...like electrocuting the connections between her aleimi and her body. It probably would have killed a regular seer. Physically too, I mean...it would have killed them dead. As it is, it kind of...

Wreg trailed, as if realizing suddenly who he was talking to.

He looked up, staring at Jon with his black eyes.

Jon couldn’t move. He just stood there, unable to see Wreg anymore, or Allie...or Revik. After a few more minutes of standing there, swaying, he felt tears pouring down his face, but felt powerless to stop that, too. He could feel it now. As soon as Wreg started talking, he could feel what the other seer was telling him.

Gods,
he sent.
Wreg...is she some kind of vegetable?

That time, Wreg didn’t answer him, even without words.

The other seers all followed Wreg as he carried Allie back out to the main room. Jorag and Loki watched and half-supported Revik, although he didn’t seem to see either of them. Jon grew aware of sounds around him, murmured conversations. He heard a few of their words, here and there, but never managed to arrange them into a coherent picture in his mind.

Hospital...

Balidor sending help...

SCARB connections...

Grid failures in...

Stabilize structures in...

Tracking aleimic current for...

Jon gave up, shutting them all out. He struggled to keep from shutting down entirely, or maybe just walking out of there. He lingered in the background, instead, watching as the others sat around Allie, giving her light, taking turns going into the Barrier to do...something.

Allie didn’t move, though.

Jon couldn’t feel anything on her, and somewhere in that silence, he heard Wreg say that they had to feed her light at this point just to remind her body that it was still alive.

Somewhere in that, Jorag had hit Revik in the neck with a syringe, filled with some ungodly number of CCs of some amber-colored fluid that Jon recognized from when they’d had to sedate Revik in the tank. It hadn’t hit him all at once, even then. Wreg caught him around the waist and led him to the couch before he could fall all the way, covering him with a few more blankets from Jon’s childhood bedroom and assigning Jorag to keep light in him, too, and keep him from letting himself die in the Barrier.

Through all of that, Jon just stood there, feeling helpless.

He knew he should be doing something.

He knew he should, but he had no idea what.

Eventually, he walked out to the back porch, and looked out over his mother’s overgrown garden, and the rose bushes, now absent of flowers, that had pushed their way almost onto the deck itself. Their mother had always gone more for the English garden look, out of control and vaguely untended-looking, kind of like their mother herself. Jon sat numbly on a moldy, white-wicker chair, feeling the woven strands crack and bend under his weight. The thing had deteriorated even from what Jon remembered, with broken pieces sticking out all over the backrest and arms, although the legs remained sturdy under him.

He watched Illeg smoke a hiri, unable to feel much of anything for what felt like a very long time. When Illeg went back inside, letting the screen door slam behind her as she retreated, Jon remained where he was, watching clouds pass in a mostly-blue sky with cold wind.

San Francisco winters, the only time you could see the sun.

It struck him suddenly, that today was Revik’s birthday.

The thought was the thing to finally reach him.

Allie’s laughter as she’d planned on trying to surprise him. That ridiculous present she found him, somehow even in the midst of an apocalypse. A red-faced roan horse she’d wanted to smuggle in from the police stables to give to him in the hotel’s lobby...some kind of private joke from when they’d first bonded at that cabin in the woods.

Jon felt himself choking as he tried to cry, and couldn’t.

He sat there, unable to move, when a voice rose in his head, so familiar that it froze his limbs, wiping out everything he’d felt, only seconds before.

So you don’t think Revik likes my birthday present then?
Cass asked him, smiling at him in the dark.
Pity. I put so much thought into it, too...

“Cass...” Jon spoke aloud, but only in a whisper, losing his voice as he saw her face swim forward in that nothingness.
You killed her...gods. You killed her, Cass. You killed Allie...

No,
Cass said, her voice sharply warning.
This was a compromise, Jon. Shadow wanted to kill her. I proposed this, instead.

Waiting for his reaction, she smiled wider when Jon didn’t give her one.

Maybe I just wanted to see what Allie’s sexy honey Revik would do,
Cass sent to Jon’s mind next.
...If I kept her at least marginally alive, that is. It’s been awhile since he’s had a good challenge, hasn’t it? By the time he finds me, I should be pretty good at the telekinesis. Maybe I can make him an offer he won’t refuse...

Jon couldn’t make sense of her words.

He could barely make sense of his own thoughts. The only one that made sense to him didn’t answer anything. It didn’t really ask anything either, since he knew she wouldn’t be able to answer it, at least not in a way that would make sense to him.

He asked it anyway, unable to not ask.

How could you do this?
he said.
Allie loved you more than anyone. You were family to her. I loved you, Cass. Gods, Revik loved you...so much...

I’m guessing he’s not feeling a lot of love for me now,
Cass said, still smiling that smile he knew and didn’t know.
...Do you think that will change if I raise his kid for him? After all, he’s a bit of a masochist, right? Maybe this will turn him on, once he gets over the angsty bits...?

Jon just sat there, unable to untangle her words.

He couldn’t feel all of the things that rose in his own light when she said them, or push past them enough to know how to reach her. Instead, a duller sort of feeling rose in his heart, something he could barely make sense of at first, that grew hotter with every passing second.

No, Cass,
he said finally.
I don’t think so.

You don’t?
She made her pouty face, like she used to when they were kids.
Bummer. And I’ve got this hot bod and everything...

But Jon barely heard that, either.

He’s going to kill you, Cass,
he said, feeling that deadening pain in his chest worsen.
He’s going to kill you, and I’m going to be there when he does it...I’m going to help him, Cass.

Cass laughed.

Jon didn’t react as she did, or when she laughed again, even as her presence faded from around him. Jon couldn’t bring himself to care about anything she said now, given what she’d just done, and how she’d talked about Allie afterwards. He didn’t care what Shadow had done to her, or whether or not this was even her fault. He didn’t care if she could be saved. He didn’t even care if Shadow had manipulated her into doing everything she had done.

Taking a snapshot of everything he’d felt in those last minutes, and every word she’d said, he stood up, taking another breath before he went back into the house.

He would give the imprints to Wreg. Now. So they could start tracking her.

He already knew that his words to her hadn’t been idle.

He knew exactly what Revik would do, once they got Allie stabilized and someplace safe. Jon had no doubt in his mind as to what lengths Revik would go to accomplish that goal, either, especially since Allie’s child might be the only thing left he had of her.

Whatever Revik did, Jon fully intended to be right beside him as he did it.

Even if Revik killed him with his own hands.

He would see Cass pay for this, if it was the last thing he did.

* * *

CONTINUE READING WITH:

BRIDGE (ALLIE’S WAR BOOK SEVEN)

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