Dragon: Allie's War Book Nine (45 page)

Next to me, I felt Dalejem suddenly.

Fear plumed off his light, a disbelief that mirrored mine. I felt him recognize the being’s eyes too, along with the rest of him, which made me flinch again.

I had an absurd desire to tell him to leave…to take Feigran and just go…but for those few seconds, I couldn’t speak, or tear my eyes off the scene in front of me.

I was still staring at the other female’s terrified face when Dragon lifted his arm. He moved swiftly, liquidly. Gracefully, also like Revik did…but in a rhythm that was utterly different. Before my mind could catch up, he plunged the curved, glass knife into the middle of her chest.

I sucked in a breath.

Briefly, my mind reeled, torn with helpless shock.

I found myself breathing hard, watching in a stunned paralysis as he cut into her sideways then jerked the knife up and out of her ribcage. He grunted with effort as he unhooked it from where it got caught on something…probably one of her bones.

That time, my aleimi ignited instinctively.

I watched Dragon wipe the knife off on the female’s bare leg. I watched the light drain out of her body. I stood there, watching her go, feeling even more helpless as that denser anger grew in my light. Next to me, Dalejem muttered an angry curse.

Or maybe a prayer…I didn’t try to make it out.

I also didn’t take my eyes off Dragon’s face, or the glitter of emotion I saw in his clear eyes. From the greenish distortion of my view of him, I knew my own eyes were glowing.

When his irises ignited, too, my muscles tensed to marble.

His eyes shone…a darker green than Revik’s.

Even so, I knew that light. I felt the trail slide up from his lower aleimic into those geometric structures, watching them move and shift and reconfigure. More of those structures lit up as I watched, intensifying the flight or fight response in mine.

“You need to get out of here,” I told Dalejem, without looking away from Dragon.

“Respectfully,” Dalejem growled back. “It’s a little fucking late for that, sister…”

Barely a handful of seconds had passed since we’d walked through that door.

Your soldier is right,
a voice said in my mind.

It was loud. Shocking in its immediacy.

Whatever the purpose of that organic muzzle, it reached me directly, without interference.

It also sounded like Revik.

Behind us, the door we’d just entered through slammed shut.

Dalejem and I both jumped at least a foot. Only Feigran didn’t flinch. He stared at the male seer on the platform with a look of utter adulation in his eyes.

“Brother…” he whispered softly. “Beautiful, beautiful brother…the dark behind the stars…”

I gave him a look, maybe just to get his attention.

Or maybe to shut him up.

Whichever it was, it didn’t work. I don’t think Feigran even remembered I was there.

“Beautiful, beautiful brother…” he whispered, love in his eyes.

“What do you want from us?” I said, turning back towards the seer on the platform.

I realized only then that he was looking at Feigran, too. It hit me in the next breath he was probably talking to him as well, given the expressions on both of their faces. I studied the slight glaze I could see in Feigran’s eyes and frowned.

Goddamn it. I’d been led here.

I’d been fucking
led
here.

Feigran brought me here because Dragon asked him to. I’d been too stupid to see what was staring me right in the face.

Dragon looked back at me. Despite the mask, I could feel him smiling.

You would have come for me eventually, my loving sister…
he whispered.
We are one. You are a part of me. I breathe and you fly…

That time, his light followed his words, flooding into mine before I could make sense of what he’d said. His light blinded me, creating reactions too multifaceted for me to name before they disappeared or morphed into something else.

I felt confusion, an intense profusion…voltage that drew me…

More disconcertingly, I felt his presence in the light structures I shared only with Revik during sex.

It was something I’d never even talked about with anyone else.

When Revik and I were at our most intimate we would lose ourselves there, in what always looked to me like twin light tails. They twined into one another when we were together, pulling us out of our bodies, driving me out of my fucking mind…driving Revik out of his. There were nights when most of our sex involved one or both of us holding that off, since it generally made us lose control in a matter of seconds.

No one else had ever touched that part of my light. No one.

Dragon coiled into that part of me effortlessly, however…and
pulled.

He pulled really fucking hard.

So hard I couldn’t get out of the way.

I let out a choked cry as I fell abruptly to my knees. It hurt like hell when they impacted the hard floor, but I couldn’t slow that down, either. Next to me, Dalejem lunged, grabbing my arm without lowering his gun.

“Bridge!” he cried. “Bridge! Are you all right?”

His fingers tightened on me like a vise.

“We have to get the fuck
out
of here!” he shouted.

I couldn’t answer.

Pain flooded my light…so much separation pain I couldn’t see.

I felt Revik in that. Revik…it always came back to Revik, no matter how much I tried to let him go, to block him out of my light. Everything I’d been holding back for days, weeks now. It all came ripping out of me. I couldn’t answer Dalejem. I just knelt there, gasping, my head hanging, blinded by that longing. Grief rose in me in those blank spaces. I thought of Lily and the pain grew beyond where I could stand it, forcing out a choked cry.

I fought to pull my light back into myself…to control myself. It seemed to take forever. I don’t know how long it actually took. Minutes. Hours.

I don’t know. I just know I wasn’t the one to finally end it.

He did.

I felt a pulse of satisfaction in that multi-colored aleimi as he withdrew.

For what might have been a few seconds more, all I felt was relief.

“Alyson!” Jem was still gripping my arm.

I realized it had to be closer to seconds rather than hours, when I saw the look on his face.

“Alyson! Allie…gods! Snap out of it! Snap out of it…I need you here!” His eyes met mine when I looked up and relief flooded my light once we’d locked gazes. I realized it was his.
“Gaos
…Bridge. Allie. You scared the living shit out of me…are you all right, sister?”

I barely heard him.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt violated like that. I could barely comprehend the emotions that came with it. I felt Dalejem’s hands on my arms again and looked up, seeing the pain and empathy in his eyes right before I looked away.

I let him help me up that time, though.

Still avoiding looking at him, I dragged myself slowly to my feet, slamming a shield over my light. I was shaking, though…shaken, I guess.

When I looked up, Dragon was staring between Dalejem and I.

I couldn’t see his mouth, but again, I would have sworn he was smiling.

…Ah, he is not only your soldier. You have a new pet, my beautiful sister?
he sent.

I gritted my teeth, fighting the pain that still coursed through my light. I still gripped my stomach with my arm, I realized. I also held onto Dalejem. I didn’t let go.

Who are you?
I demanded.

You know who I am.

You’re not Revik,
I snarled.

Next to me, Dalejem jumped.

Dragon didn’t. The good humor in his light only increased.

…I have been expecting you, my most Exalted Bridge.
His still-glowing eyes never left mine, nor did his face noticeably change. Even so, I felt his smile again.
I’ve waited so very, very long, sister…so long…almost as long as Death…almost as long as him…

I tensed. Death was Revik.

So he was admitting he wasn’t Revik at least.

Suddenly, I wanted to see behind that mask, so badly I felt sick with longing for it. I needed to know it wouldn’t be Revik’s face I saw there. I needed to see the differences, even if they were only from his light and facial expression.

Dragon’s mental voice grew into a whisper.

You’re late,
he told me, softer.

Revik told me that once, too.

Before I could recover enough to retort something back, his light cracked out.

He didn’t try to get inside me that time. He just threw me.

The blow lifted me off my feet, slamming me into the organic wall.

It knocked the air out of my lungs. I opened my mouth to gasp, pain exploding in my abdomen. Before I could take a breath I found myself crumpled at the base of that organic wall, my hands and arms splayed as I fought to drag myself back up. I moved purely in instinct at that point, fighting to get up, back to my feet before my vision cleared, using the wall. I didn’t take my eyes off Dragon, but unlike before, my confusion was gone.

My mind felt stripped. Strangely clear.

I also knew exactly what I had to do.

I had to take this fucker down.

Now.

His light ignited again before I’d completed the thought.

I slammed out with my own aleimi…using everything I had.

Unlike with Revik in Dubai, there was no hesitation.

And there sure as fuck was no holding back.

14

LIKE LIGHTNING IN HIGH CLOUDS

Next to me, Dalejem sucks in a breath.

That time, I feel it aimed at me…what he feels on my light.

I catch the sound in slow-motion, in that space of no-time as light pulls in around me. Light gathers inside me, in towards those higher structures of my aleimi. The folding sensation takes over my light. It yanks me up, up, up…I fly into a high, white space. It blanks my physical vision even as it envelopes me in the clearest Barrier space imaginable.

Clean. Limitless. At-one.

I can see.

I can see…everything.

For those brief flickers in no-time, I remember.

I remember who I am.

More importantly maybe, I remember who I am not.

I leave the elaborate light show. The endless doubts and fears and confusions. The layers upon layers of illusion and posturing, lying, tugging, coercing, scaring, draining, spinning, obfuscating, brainwashing, belittling. Just…bullshit. I leave all that bullshit behind.

Up here, there are no separations.

To manipulate, I can’t afford to separate from any of it, from any living being around me.
 
And yeah…I know how that sounds. I especially know how it sounds down on Earth, outside of this space that I’m in…but that’s just more light show. More bullshit. More insidious worming into our brains, gaslighting us with increasingly cynical and disconnected realities.