Dragon: Allie's War Book Nine (90 page)

It seemed like a really long time before I heard the crash in the area of the cockpit.

The reactions of everyone to that louder noise seemed to take longer still.

“Allie!” Balidor shouted.

Unhooking the headset, I tossed it on the seat next to me. Then I was walking fast down the aisle even as the plane lurched, picking up speed as it began to accelerate down the runway. I didn’t stop but just grabbed onto the backs of seats to yank myself forward.

None of the other seers moved at first, or stopped staring at me...not until I’d passed that first row of seats and pushed my way through the blue curtain. Only then did I realize a number of them were calling out to me, asking me what the hell just happened.

Ignoring them, I continued to walk towards the front of the plane, even as I felt Jem unhook his own belt and pull himself out of his seat to come after me. I felt the nose start to lift up off the ground, the first bump from a pocket of air as the plane moved faster.

“Allie!” Jem yelled from the back of this section of cabin. “What happened?”

I was already most of the way there.

I reached the tattooed seer who now lay crumpled on the floor at the front of the plane.

A female seer sat buckled into a jump seat nearby, her eyes wide with fear. I gave her a reassuring gesture as I lowered my weight to a crouch, gripping onto the nearby seats to keep from being thrown down the aisle as I stared into the strange seer’s face. Seeing the open-eyed stare and lack of movement, I frowned, touching his throat with my fingers.

No pulse. Fuck.

A heavier hand fell on my shoulder. “Allie…
gaos.
What happened?”

He spoke loud over the roar of the engines, but I could feel his light wrapped in mine, reassuring...also relieved. I could feel some element of understanding there, powering that relief, along with him kicking himself that he hadn’t noticed whatever it was.

“Who was he after?” he said.

“You,” I said, looking up at him.

I saw Jem flinch, more in surprise than anything.

Then his light grew even warmer.

Embarrassed by the softness I could see growing in his eyes, I looked back down at the face of the seer I was now pretty sure I’d killed.

“Get Jasek up here,” I said. “We need this guy ID’d, even if it's an alias. I don’t think he did this alone, whether it was religiously motivated or not...and while he might be a part of a group that's a proxy of some kind, I’m not convinced it was Shadow.”

“Who, then?” Jem said.

I shrugged, both with my shoulders and one hand. “No idea. He had a strange shield though. It felt familiar to me in some way...but not Shadow-familiar. Something else.” I frowned, trying to remember, sifting through my seer memory for something more concrete.

When it came to me, my frown deepened.

“
Gaos i'thir li'dare
...” I muttered.

“What?” Jem said.

When I glanced up, I could see Jasek heading our way along with two of his infiltrators, including that seer, Crieg, with whom I’d still barely spoken more than a handful of words. Seeing the same seer staring at me, his dark eyes holding a faint concern, I realized Jem must have called them up here with his headset.

Jem himself was watching my face again, that warmth still in his light, even as he seemed to be trying to read me without reaching out.

I made it easier for him, opening my light to him more.

“Myther cult,” I said, focusing back on the task at hand. As my own words sank in, my voice held disbelief. “A real whack-job one. Fanatics. I can't even believe they still exist...”

“Myther cult? Here?” Jem frowned, watching my face warily before he looked back at the dead seer. “You’ve come across them before?” Clicking softly, he amended his words. “I mean…yes. Obviously, yes. But do you know them, Allie? Do you know who they are?”

“More or less.” Glancing up at his questioning pulse, I let sarcasm reach my voice. “If you count being kidnapped by a couple of them and then nearly
lit on fire
in some kind of twisted end of the world ritual ‘knowing them,’ then yeah, we go way back.” I gave Jem a grim look. “Back to when I still thought I was human, Jem. Before Revik pulled me.”

I saw understanding reach his expression. “New York?”

I startled, eyes widening. Then it was my turn to frown. “You know about that?”

He made an apologetic gesture with one hand. “Your mother.” Seeing my frown deepen, he exhaled, as if reluctant to tell me the rest. “Kali tipped Revik off. Told him to go to New York…that he needed to be there in person.”

I exhaled, trying to hide my anger and failing. Badly.

It crossed my mind that the Myther cult I remembered had some connection to Shadow, too. Or Revik and I had thought so, the one time we’d discussed it since I got all of my memories back and could remember the specifics of that night.

We’d questioned one of their acolytes after Revik got me out of the worst of that and out of danger of dying at least. The guy we talked to had been drugged to the gills and obviously crazy, but he’d said a number of things that didn’t make sense to me or Revik at the time but struck us as pretty big coincidences after everything of the past few years.

They’d known about the nine intermediaries alive on Earth.

Crazy fanatic guy also told Revik they had some “patron" who only came to them in dreams, who told them what to do.

If that didn’t sound like some fucked-up Shadow thing, I didn’t know what did.

But Jasek and the others had reached us by then, so I focused my attention on them rather than waiting for Jasek or one of his infiltrators to start peppering me with questions.

“I want his light mapped,” I said, meeting Jasek’s gaze. “You’re going to have to hurry,” I added. “I killed him, so there won’t be much left to map by the time we reach Asia. I’ll stay here and help...” I glanced at Jem, who made a sharp gesture with one hand, telling me with his eyes he wasn’t going anywhere. “...So will Jem,” I said, letting him feel my relief.

My eyes returned to Jasek, holding a harder warning.

“Keep the group small, okay? We have reason to believe it’s religiously motivated, but there might be a Shadow connection, too.”

Jasek nodded, touching his headpiece with his fingers.

Jem had already knelt down beside me, gripping the seat on his side with a white-knuckled hand as the plane continued to climb. The bumpiness inside the cabin was mostly gone by then, both from the ground and the initial turbulence as the plane took off.

It was really just gravity and the angle we were fighting now.

I figured Jem had already started the mapping, but when I glanced at him, he was looking at me. Before I could ask, he leaned towards me...and kissed me, hard on the mouth, clasping the back of my head in his free hand.

We’d never done that in front of any of the others. Kissed, I mean. I found myself panicking at first from the public display...then, when Jem started using his light, I kind of forgot Jasek and his two infiltrators were standing there, too.

When we finally parted, a long-feeling handful of seconds later, Jem grinned at me.

“Thanks,” he said. “You know...for saving my life.”

“
De nada,
” I said, grinning back. I nudged his shoulder with mine, if only to get that softer look off his face. “I guess that makes us even, right? Only since I didn’t actually almost get myself
killed
for you, I’m thinking maybe you’re still ahead...”

But something in that made his smile fade.

Studying his face, I bit my lip, regretting my words even as a pained look came to his eyes. Seeing the emotion there, I nudged his shoulder, softer that time, sending him a pulse of warmth.

“Hey,” I said. “This guy really is dead, Jem.”

His eyes cleared as my words sank in.

He nodded, once, looking back at the dead seer. I watched as he stripped the emotion back from his light, turning it infiltrator-sharp.

That time, when his irises slid out of focus, I could tell he was working.

Still, yeah, some part of me wondered what he’d been thinking just then.

29

A DISTANT VOICE

Revik…baby…can you hear me?

He sat at the head of a long table, in an open room inside the Royal Gardens.

It was late summer now.

No…Fall. It was Fall.

They had told him that. Someone told him it was October.

The thought flickered through his mind, distant, significant in some way that lingered on the edges of his tongue and mouth. He didn’t know what it meant. He glanced at the trees and realized the leaves had colors, that many had already begun to fall from the dark branches. There had been rain. One day this week at least.

He could see birds…

Revik
…
I
’
m coming for you
…

“Brother Sword?” a voice said.

The voice was polite. Female. He turned his head, and found a seer watching him. He knew her. He could not remember how he knew her…but he felt certain he was correct.

“Brother," she said, from where she sat in a half-circle with a dozen other seers. “We require your guidance here, brother…”

Revik nodded, sitting up.

Threading his fingers together on the ancient wood table, he leaned forward, remembering why he was there. The construct. They were redesigning the construct here; connecting it to the larger compound below-ground.

He found himself in that other place a lot now.

It had been strange at first, to be underground. He found it uncomfortable at first, not as nice as it was here, with the trees and the birds. But he had grown accustomed to that, too. He was in the Barrier so often there, it mattered little. When he wasn't, he would drift in some way. He would look at the trees and wonder at the significance of colored leaves. He always felt like he was missing something here…like some denser meaning eluded him.

He didn’t mind that really. Honestly, he sort of liked it.

But work…work had always been easier.

Clearer. More direct.

Picking up from the seer what she wanted from him, he receded into those higher spaces now, looking at the various configurations he’d mapped earlier that day. Or maybe the day before…or a handful of days before that. Time confused him now, too; he spent so little of it on the ground. So little of him lived outside of the Barrier at all now, he almost forgot he was still a prisoner of time’s more linear waves.

He found the segment she was looking for, the links between the secondary construct and the security station underground and snapshotted it, sending it her way.

Once he had, he realized he should speak again.

“Will that be adequate?” he said, clearing his throat.

She smiled at him. Friendly. Warm.

For an instant, he saw something else in her eyes, too.

Revik
…
I love you
…

He did not know what that something was. The emotion contained some flicker of resonance somewhere, in a more distant part of his light.