Dragon: Allie's War Book Nine (83 page)

Something in his mind shut off in those few seconds of silence.

Then the silence ended.

Charlie screamed. “NOOO! NOOOO! Murderers!
Murderers!”

She screamed louder, her voice a long wail of shocked grief.

Revik just knelt there, feeling some part of him break, transported back to his childhood in fragments, in broken pieces of blood-covered grass and smoke. He stared at that small body in the grass and saw Gisele there. He saw Kuchta. He saw all the girls he had kissed and fumbled with on the grass…who he’d shown too much of himself to, who had to be removed.

The strangers Menlim had him kill.

The friends.

Pirna. Pirna’s husband.

Laren.

Elise…Ellie. His Ellie. He’d killed her, too.

“NOOOOO!” Charlie screamed. “Gods no! No! She can’t be gone! Junei!
Junei!
Answer me! Answer me, Junei!”

Her voice broke, a half-sob wailing into the night sky.

Revik couldn’t feel her light. Even so, he winced painfully, feeling the grief in that scream so far inside himself that nothing else remained. Only her voice lived there, echoing inside him, echoing in the air. In those few seconds, he wanted to die again. He wanted to die more intensely than he had in decades. He’d caused this. This was because of him.

It was always because of him.

“Nooo!” Kneeling on the grass, Charlie yanked her whole body against the guards’ hands. She pulled and sobbed and screamed until Menlim nodded and they let her go. She crawled then, wracked with sobs, trying to reach her daughter. “Nooo! Junei!”

Menlim nodded to the tattooed seer again.

Revik closed his eyes.

He closed them tight, but it didn’t help. It didn’t take anything away.

Even the collar couldn’t do that…not anymore.

Another shot rang over the stretch of grass by the City’s walls.

The screaming and wailing abruptly ended.

That time, Revik barely flinched. He knelt there, no longer even trying to think past the pain.

He’d failed. He failed…and he’d failed his wife and daughter, too.

Allie. Lily. Maygar. The others…all of those seers and humans still alive from the Lists. Wreg. Jon. Balidor. All of the countless others who had fought and risked their lives for them.

Allie had been right…it had all been for nothing.

Menlim had known. He’d known before they’d even started this.

And now his wife was coming here.

She was coming here to save him.

For a long time, that quiet felt worse than anything that had come before.

27

ONE MONTH

Revik?

I wait, keeping my light utterly still as I focus intently on that high, still place. As I feel for his pale blue-white light. That pure, crystalline flavor that is only his.

Revik? Are you there?

Silence greets me.

More than silence.

I can’t feel him anymore.

Revik?
I send, softer now, more tentative.
Revik? Can you hear me?

Biting my lip, I send him information anyway, telling myself it might help…that he might hear it. Knowing I’m filling the silence, that no one is listening on the other end.

We’re using the map…
I tell him.
We’re going to the sites, but each time he’s gotten here before us. He killed Eddard. He killed one of the others, too…

Lily swims briefly behind my eyes. I blink to fight the feeling back, knowing it might show in the space. Knowing that my missing our daughter won’t help him, that it won’t help either of us right now.

It’s been weeks…and I can’t feel him.

I can’t even feel him having sex. I can’t feel him drunk.

I can’t feel him watching me with Jem.

Revik?
I fight fear…fight to hold onto that higher vibration.
Baby, answer me. I need you to answer me…I understand if you’re mad…I promise you, I understand. You can yell at me all you want, but please answer me. Please. I’m afraid…

Nothing.

Some part of me holds onto the idea that he’s angry, that this is punishment.

But I don’t really believe it.

Not anymore.

Revik…answer me, or I’ll make you sorry you didn’t.
I swallow, fighting pain.
I’ll make you watch. I’ll make you watch every damned second of it…I’ll open my light…I’ll give him head and open my light…I’ll use the telekinesis. I’ll do it like he was you. I’ll show him that place on me, that place on both of us…

Biting my lip, I wait, breathing too much, feeling tears on my face.

Feeling like I went too far.

Answer me, goddamn it! Answer me!

But he doesn’t.

Revik––

“What are you doing?”

I jumped then turned, feeling caught as I raised a hand to my face, wiping my cheek.

“Nothing.” I cleared my throat, forcing a half-smile as I shook my head. “Nothing. Where are you at with that?” I said, nodding towards the three-dimensional image shining off his hand-held. “Anything?”

Dalejem frowned, studying my face with his dark green eyes.

I watched him decide to let it go, even as he sighed, clicking softly to let me know he was letting it go…and possibly that he might revisit it later.

“You mean apart from another dead body?” he grunted, looking ruefully over at one side of the Persian rug.

The same rug covered most of the high-end sitting room and had to have cost thousands of dollars when it was bought; unfortunately, it had been more or less ruined by the corpse rotting into the fibers on one end, even beyond the slight mold smell from the rains.

I followed his gaze, my eyes focusing briefly on an also-expensive-looking high-heeled shoe still on a stockinged foot. The shoeless foot splayed next to it looked strangely innocent in comparison, making me grimace a little even as I remembered who she was.

“And this is where he wanted us?” I said, still staring at her foot.

“Same marker,” he said, his voice leaking frustration as he focused back on the organic key. “We’re exactly where we’re supposed to be, according to this
dugra-te
thing. I’m beginning to think he’s just leading us to his handiwork…like a cat leaves a dead mouse on his favorite human’s pillow.”

He motioned around at the building as a whole.

“There is no one else here,” he added. “No storage, like you told me to look for…no other bodies. Their lights just extinguish from the board, about an hour after we arrive. Like the last two drop points.”

I forced myself to try and think, to focus on this, the immediate thing.

“Which person was this?” I said, frowning. “Who was she in real life?”

“Foreign Minister to Britain from Dubai,” he said at once. “Before the plague, anyway.”

He continued to read off the diagram, his eyes narrowing.

“According to Balidor’s people, she’s got a half-dozen aliases,” he said. “The one here is human, obviously. Not only was she a diplomat but a prominent businesswoman. Well-connected, obviously, or she wouldn’t have gotten the post. Immigrated here from the Middle East when she took the diplomatic appointment back in 2013. ‘Aria Sparten’…it looks like the family is a married name. No children…”

He gave me a flat look.

“…Obviously. She was heavily involved in the art community here in London before the plague. Ran a gallery down in Soho. Part-owner of another near Westminster.”

“Any other important aliases?”

“The others seem to be neutralized now. She was the wife of a sheik-type in some earlier human life, according to this thing. She’s seer, so most of the aliases go pretty far back.”

I nodded, still fighting to think.

“So?” he said. “This is bullshit, right? He’s not leading us to anything, really. Not even to himself. Just showing us his kills. We can’t even get ahead of him because he only highlights the next after we reach the one before. And we still have no idea why he’s doing this…or if it will even do any good, given what Balidor told us about the bodies replacing themselves.”

I frowned, looking around the high-end flat we’d broken into.

“You’re sure there’s no body storage here?” I muttered, thinking aloud as much as anything.

“Like I just told you, I looked,” Dalejem said, rolling his eyes a little. “…Just like at the last two places. There is nothing, Bridge. Nothing we can pick up with sensors…no constructs in the area apart from the one around this apartment. Nothing the locals haven’t ID’d already, and most of those come straight from our allies here in Britain.”

“Can we trust them?” I said, giving him a sharper look.

Dalejem shrugged. “More here than anywhere else we’ve been,” he said.

I nodded, knowing he was right.

Most of the seers here were loyal, although I had zero doubts that Shadow’s people had infiltrated the group on the ground here, just like they did everywhere else.

Hell, Eddard and this other network woman were proof of that. I’d already noticed Menlim seemed to like to hide his network people among our people more often than the obvious, Rook-infested areas. Even now, after the plague, none of those dots had shown up in a Shadow-run city. They’d all remained outside of them.

Yet London was one of the few cities that had a real working force of infiltrators straight out of Seertown’s training programs under Vash. So yeah, I knew we couldn’t trust all of them, but I also knew that Shadow would be stupid to store anything important here.

Well, other than his handily-replaceable network people, that is.

The lead infiltrator on the ground here, an older and unusually dark-skinned seer named Jasek, was someone I liked a lot, and pretty much instantly. I’d met him way back when I came to London the first time; he’d led the team of infiltrators who debriefed Revik following his time as Terian’s captive. He’d also been the one I talked to while Revik was still in Cairo.

I’d trusted him almost instinctively back then, although I knew it might be foolhardy to do so now, given that I didn’t really know him all that well. His unusual coloring and hair texture made him a natural for infiltration, so he’d been recruited as a kid into the Seven’s team.