Allie's War Season Three (40 page)

I flinched, ducking instinctively even as Revik's fingers clamped down on my arm. He grabbed hold of me less than a second after the first shot was fired, gripping me as if he intended to drag me across the table to him. I let out a gasp, realizing I wasn't hit even as I turned to look to Revik in a kind of panic. But I didn't see any blood on him, either.

Dorje hadn't been looking at either of us, and suddenly, my eyes found the real target...even as Jon let out a horrified yell.

"Oh my God!" His voice grew hoarse, holding a kind of slow-motion disbelief. "Vash! Gods...someone do something! Do something!
Vash!"

He stood up, his voice helpless even as he caught hold of Vash's shoulders, as if not sure what to do himself.

Fleetingly, my mind told Jon to get down, to pull Vash under the table with him, out of the way of the gun...but most of me knew it wouldn't matter now, that it was already too late.

Whatever had been about to happen had already happened.

My eyes found the aged seer.

Vash had been knocked backwards by the first two shots. His body hung there, almost straight from the force of the hits...as if pinned there by the metal as it ripped and tore through him. Blood darkened his throat, trailing down to stain the sand-colored robes he'd worn since the first time I met him in that compound in Seertown.

I could only stare, feeling the floor drop out from under me...even as another coil of light snapped out of Revik in a sharp wave, dropping Dorje to the carpet like a puppet with cut strings. Revik was still holding my arm, still pulling me towards him over the table, but I couldn't tear my eyes off the ancient seer sitting across from us, even as I let Revik drag me out of range of the door.

I watched the light dim in Vash's eyes. I saw it, even as I refused to believe it...even as the faint smile remained on his lips, coupled with a faintly puzzled expression as the last of him left his body, and then the room.

I don't think I knew I was screaming until Revik already had me all the way across the table. He crushed me in his arms once I reached the other side, his light a thick shield around both of us, holding me as if trying to contain what fought to explode out of my light.

I couldn't do anything but stand there, staring at the broken doll that had been Vash's body, the only form I could remember ever knowing him in...although he'd once told me there had been others, that we'd known each other in histories besides this one.

I was still screaming as I watched Vash finish dying right in front of me.

11

REVELATIONS

I FOUND MYSELF in Jon's room, hours later.

I wasn't sure how long I'd been there. I couldn't quite remember what had happened between Dorje dropping to the carpet and now, not without concentrating, and I wasn't ready for that, so I didn't. It seemed like an endless stretch of time where I sat with Jon on the couch in his and Dorje's suite, coiling as much light around my brother as I could, doing anything I could for him...which admittedly, wasn't much.

Dorje was dead.

Revik hadn't done it. Dorje took something...some kind of poison, like he'd been a Russian spy in some novel about the Cold War. The techs told me afterwards that he'd probably already been dying when Revik knocked him out.

In any case, he never woke up.

I don't know how much of that Jon even heard to be honest.

I only half-heard it myself, still trying to pull my mind off Vash and the hole I felt with him gone, even now. I was trying to feign competence while I stood there, maybe even hiding in that military facade I sometimes tried to emulate in Revik. Basically, I was doing whatever I could just so I could be there for Jon, at least as much as anyone possibly could be. I hadn't been there for him when mom died, or when he'd gone through that hell in the mountains with Terian, so I figured the least I could do was be here for this.

After all, because of me he'd already lost pretty much everyone he'd ever cared about.

More than that, he'd lost a whole life. He'd lost his hand...a job he loved, all his friends. He'd left behind a guy he'd been falling in love with in San Francisco. Unlike me, he'd been a pretty well-integrated person before his sister was outed as a seer and later a kind of over-hyped terrorist-slash-mythological figure. He'd gotten tagged as a terrorist, too.

So yeah, the least I could do was be there for him for this.

Still, someone must have helped me.

I know this, because the lines blurred for me, too.

I wasn't sure how I'd gotten to Jon's room, for example. I don't know if I went there on my own, or if Jon led me there, Revik...or one of the other seers. I remember Balidor being there, ushering me out of the conference room as he offered to handle the details regarding both bodies. I remember them talking about why Dorje might have done it, even as they all stood, grim-faced, trying to decide whether and how to get Vash's body back to the Pamir...or maybe to Seertown, where his son, Yerin, was buried.

I heard Loki say something about Dorje's family being missing, meaning his biological one. Theories got thrown around, like maybe whoever ordered Dorje to do this might have taken his family as collateral...but all they had were speculations.

I remember seeing Revik holding Jon, rubbing his back as he gripped him tightly in his arms, rocking him gently. I remember stepping back to give them space, wondering if I should leave when Jon started crying...silently at first, but almost like he was suffocating, fighting out these kind of shuddering, back-wrenching sobs that were hard to even watch. Revik held him in a cocoon of warmth and light and love...enough that I could only stand there watching dumbly, more grateful to him than I knew how to express.

Jon cried with me, too. He waited until we were back in his room, on this same couch. There was something younger about it, more vulnerable, when he did it with me. Maybe because we went through the thing with Dad together, and although that felt like a million years ago in some ways, it also felt strangely recent, too.

Maybe it was just because I'd known him when he really was a kid.

I don't know how long we sat there, in that fog of his emotion and mine. I don't remember doing much but sitting there, rubbing his back through his shirt as he curled up with his head on my lap. I knew we were alone again, that Revik had left.

Otherwise, everything around us just seemed to stop.

I tried to think about Dorje himself, who'd been my friend, too. I couldn't connect the person who'd held that gun to the guy I'd known, though. I couldn't make sense of any of it, so it didn't really help me believe it had actually happened.

I wondered how Revik was, too.

Vash had been like a father to him...probably the closest he'd had since his real father had been murdered. He'd known the old seer for decades...close to a hundred years of his life. When I tried to find out how he was doing, however, he just pushed me gently away. He told me they would be doing rituals for a number of days, that he would participate in those. I knew the rituals were normally about helping the dead person cross the Barrier to the places beyond; however, in Vash's case, since he'd been such a high master, he wouldn't really need that. So for Vash, the rituals would be more for the living...a means of mourning, and also of receiving whatever Vash wanted to give those remaining behind before he truly left.

Revik told me he would come get me for some of that, if it felt appropriate...but for now I should focus on Jon, that Jon needed me more, at least right then.

So I did that.

I don't know how long I did that, but in the time that passed, it got dark outside the windows of Jon's room...and then light again. I felt pieces of the first set of rituals, probably through Revik. Barrier light shone on us, too, and Jon slept...I found myself sleeping too, or waking up, anyway, what must have been hours later. I dreamt about Vash, about golden oceans and red-gold clouds. I saw flashes of the world, not all of them good, but I remember sitting there, too, talking to the old seer for what felt like hours, although I couldn't remember anything about what we said.

I remember seeing a white sword, too...and a dying sun.

At some point after that, it got dark again, then light, until time just seemed to blur, and there were more rituals, more light...and I felt Vash a few times more, and later, Dorje, too. I heard chanting in my head so often that I couldn't tell if it came from inside or outside of the Barrier. I couldn't distinguish whether the conduit came from Revik's mind or mine, or even Vash's. Jon slept through most of the rituals themselves, but at times he had so much light on him that I wondered if I should wake him up, if he might be upset that he missed it...and missed his last chance to speak to Vash, maybe to Dorje, too.

Let him sleep,
a voice told me quietly, the one time I verged on waking him.

I don't know whose voice it was, but for some reason, I obeyed it.

Jon and I weren't alone the whole time, not even in the physical.

People came and went, some staying longer than others. I remembered Tenzi being there, who had probably been Dorje's best friend apart from Jon. They'd worked together in the Seven's Guard, signing up together after emigrating to Seertown together by trekking across the mountains from southern China. They'd met in some kind of work camp over there, and even escaped together.

I remembered answering questions, too, although I couldn't really remember about what. I remembered 'Dori being there at several points, his hand on my shoulder as he spoke to me and Jon about rituals and arrangements.

They were doing rituals for Dorje, of course, too, he promised Jon.

Most of that was a blur.

All I know for absolute certain is that at some point, it occurred to me that I couldn't afford to just sit there anymore. I couldn't afford to be as lost as Jon...I needed to try and integrate the events of that day in the conference room back into reality.

I needed to be the grown-up for once. I needed to be the one who helped ground
him
in the world...not the other way around. I couldn't afford to encourage him to drift away, to get lost in some space halfway between acceptance and denial.

I needed to be present, if only for him.

Once that much penetrated the fog of my mind, something in me kind of pulled it together. The puzzle pieces fitted back into a reasonably-coherent, single image, and suddenly I was there, in the room, looking at the two of us on that couch...looking at Jon, who still leaned most of his weight on mine. My eyes found a room service trolley and a set of trays sitting on the lower coffee table in front of us. One of those trays had been opened, which confused me at first...until I saw Jon holding a sandwich with one bite taken out of it. He chewed on some part of it still, staring into the fire, but I couldn't help wondering if he had any idea what he was doing...or how old the sandwich might be, or how long it had been sitting in the open air.

When he took another bite, it was like electrical signals reaching his brain from somewhere far away, telling him how to execute all the correct motor functions. I didn't see anything of Jon in his eyes, even as he swallowed.

Watching him eat, however, my stomach growled.

"Where's Revik?" I said, unthinking.

"He said he'd be back."

I nodded, caressing Jon's hair. I hadn't really meant the question like that. I more wondered if he'd wanted to be here, too, helping me take care of Jon.

Knowing him, he probably thought he'd get in the way.

"Revik didn't do it," Jon clarified. His eyes still looked so flat I barely recognized him. "...He didn't kill Dorje. Dorje killed himself."