Revik gave Allie another brief look.
She was studying the infiltrator, her eyes faintly wary.
He saw a faint glimmer of that older look in them, and felt himself reacting to her again. Realizing he was still crushing her fingers, he loosened his hold, gesturing to Chandre that they understood.
He moved them away a beat later, aiming his feet up the ramp to the gangplank, where the velvet-roped corridor joined the line for the other passengers. He entered the crowd thickening before the portal to the ship before looking at Allie again.
Leaning down so he wouldn’t be overheard, he squeezed her hand.
“Are you all right?” he said.
“Who are they?” Her eyes continued to follow the seers who fanned out behind them. Each of the infiltrators let themselves be absorbed into the crowd, but Allie’s eyes found Chandre among the faces. She tracked the hunter’s movements through the crowd with an ease that surprised him a little.
“Friends,” he said. “Ullsya’s people.”
She looked up. Her eyes still shone with that faint light, greener even with the contacts, and a whisper of pain went through his chest.
“You aren’t acting like they’re friends,” she said.
He shrugged. “They are curious about you.” He hesitated. “Do not talk to them, Allie. Stay out of their way.”
“You just said they were friends.”
“I just meant...do not distract them from their job.”
“Did she call you ‘sir’?”
His face grew warm. Her attention to detail was starting to unnerve him a little. “Yes.”
“So we’re in the military now?”
“No.” He stared down at her face, at a loss. “We’ll talk about it later. After we sleep, Allie.”
She nodded absently, clearly hearing the “sleep” part and not much else.
He hesitated, glancing back over his shoulder at Chandre. He needed to get them in contact with the team in San Francisco, as soon as possible. When he looked at the hunter, he saw her nod, just before she signed that they had someone on it already.
Apparently Chandre had done more than look at the structure in Allie’s light that connected her to him.
...We’ll have news in under an hour, sir.
Revik gestured for her to give it to him alone.
He waited until Chandre gestured in assent, but he didn’t miss the appraising look she gave him at the request.
He glanced at Allie again. He suspected she already knew what had happened in San Francisco. Even so, he knew from experience that knowing and knowing were two different things. He didn’t want her receiving verification of some loved one’s death as an emotionless report from an infiltrator who viewed her family as nothing but human collaterals.
He continued to study the Bridge’s face as she gazed up at the ship’s high walls, trying not to care that the guards were watching him look at her, or that her proximity was having an effect on him again...an effect they could probably see in his light.
He had to remind himself that she’d only been awake a few weeks, that she still didn’t understand how she was different.
He had to remind himself also that she really had no idea what was going on with the two of them.
Perhaps it had been a mistake to not let Ullysa and the others explain it to her in Seattle.
He was still watching her face when she leaned on his arm, merging her light overtly into his. Sucking in a breath, he closed his light, glancing reflexively at the seers watching. He saw more than one of them smiling and turned his gaze up the white face of the ship, shuffling his feet forward with the motion of the crowd, willing the line to go faster.
Nine by Night: A Multi-Author Urban Fantasy Bundle of Kickass Heroines, Adventure, Magic
16
GRIEF
A wolf runs across the tundra, tongue flicking over black lips, body elongating in rhythmic waves. It extends to full stride and retracts, stretching paws so that none of its feet touch the ground. Insanity flickers behind its eyes, joy in its feet pounding the snow in steady bursts of powder.
It runs at a single dark form marring the white plain.
I scream, my voice torn by wind.
...and again dawn colors the sky, and a dark shape burns in the distance, filling the pale blue with a curl of smoke like expelled ink. My chest feels as if someone’s taken an ice pick to it, hitting it again and again, digging out the tender light at its core.
It is a feeling worse than death.
I jerked awake. Warm weight pinned me to something soft. I started to struggle...then looked down, saw an arm. It took another series of blinks before I recognized the silver ring he wore around his smallest finger.#p#分页标题#e#