Allie's War Episodes 1-4(62)

Clasping my hands between my bare knees, I let out a strangled laugh.
I sat there for what felt like a long time. My body was unbelievably sore. Not sex sore—just run of the mill falling down a hill after being handcuffed to a car then driving off a bridge and smacking my skull sore.
The nausea worsened as soon as my bladder wasn’t full enough to distract me. I gripped the edge of the pedestal sink, afraid I’d throw up if I tried to stand, trying to come to grips with whatever was wrong with me. It felt like some part of me had been broken and smashed...then reassembled with pieces missing.
Or maybe with new ones woven in with the old...I honestly couldn’t tell.
I still sat there, paralyzed, when Ullysa knocked.
After the second knock, she tried the handle. Opening the door cautiously, she handed through clean clothes and a basket with soap and shampoo. I felt her concern, and once she’d placed everything on the tile, I felt her hesitate, about to speak. Preempting whatever attempt she might make, I reached over with one foot to push the door shut.
Even through the door and intervening corridor, I could feel him.
His anger was still there, pulsing at me, but so was the other, unmistakable now, until the two wove together, impossible to separate as distinct feelings.
He wanted me to come back, I realized with a dim sort of confusion. He was having the same reaction I was, and on more than one level.
For a moment I doubted what I felt, then a sliver of his pain hit me again, weaving into some part of me I couldn’t see, affecting me physically, too. My stomach hurt, but it wasn’t just that. I felt my face flush, my chest and thighs warm...I felt myself start to respond, to reach back in his direction, and I panicked, cutting it off.
His pain worsened, turning almost liquid.
It was unmistakably sexual.
I was still sitting there when he dropped the pretense, asking me openly to return to the room. When I didn’t respond, he pulled on me harder, letting me feel the want behind it, until I clutched the edge of the sink.
Stop it, I thought at him, gasping.
After the barest pause, he receded.
Somehow I remained lost in his light; my skin flushed as I realized the flavor of his thoughts.
He asked me again, politely that time.
When I gave a short laugh, his mind retreated. But not entirely.
I felt him thinking again...just before he started to open his light. I felt emotion expand off him, that near-vulnerability I’d glimpsed in the room. It grew stronger as it mixed with the pain, until it slid into my light...
I panicked, pushing him back.
That time, he withdrew until I barely felt him.
Still flushed, I staggered to my feet, buying myself time by examining the bruises that ran all along my legs and arms. Limping to the tub, I felt about eighty years old as I bent to twist the porcelain shower knobs all the way to hot. As water heated in the ancient pipes, I stood in the basin, shivering. I tried to ignore the waiting I felt behind his silence.
Allie, he sent softly. ...please.
The pull behind it cut my breath.
Pain flickered around the spaces between us, and for an instant, I hesitated, staring at that void, feeling it with him. The lost feeling worsened...
Then I stepped under the hot water.
I let my mind go blank as the smell of steaming hot lake water rose off my hair, sliding off my body like a second skin. I lowered my head as the water beat at it, sending brown, brackish water down the sides of the tub and into the drain.
I felt him watch me as I continued to stand there. His light flickered around mine, silent, waiting.
For a long time, it didn’t move away.






 
    Nine by Night: A Multi-Author Urban Fantasy Bundle of Kickass Heroines, Adventure,   Magic
    
 


 

13
REJECTION

 
I stood before a silhouette target, trying not to feel foolish as I fumbled with the safety of the gun I gripped in both hands. Ullysa told me twice what kind of gun it was, but all I remembered was what Ivy called it—her Baby Eagle.
Dad had been more of a rifle and shotgun kind of guy.
“Stop stalling,” Ullysa said. “You have only perhaps a few more days before you and Revi’ must leave here, Esteemed Bridge...”
I nodded, only half-listening.
Being here, surrounded by seers, I forgot we were in Seattle most of the time, even as I watched the skyline change from day to night and back again through the windows of the upper floors. It was as though the building and all its contents remained disconnected from their physical location in the middle of the human city. The one thread between it and us was the steady stream of clients for the prostitutes.
I still couldn’t grasp the extent or prevalence of this kind of thing, meaning, seers living under the radar, smack dab in the middle of human civilization without any controls. I was curious about it, sure, but a little hesitant to ask a lot of questions at this point. I’d already made the mistake of mentioning SCARB once, and managed to silence an entire room.