Page 290 of Seer Prophet

They would be scouting exits and entrances even now, assessing the club’s construct, feeding intel to Balidor’s team, mapping any active surveillance for taps to send to Dante and Vic, covering doors, windows and the roof with high-powered rifles.

Revik didn’t want anyone getting out of this fucking club without him knowing about it.

It might not help him in the end, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt.

Inside the club itself, he didn’t want a show of force.

The sheik trader, who wore the same style of human robe he’d worn on the docks and at the slave auctions, walked to Revik’s left. He barely paused following their entrance before leading them down the center aisle bisecting the club, motioning with a hand and a smile for Revik to follow.

Glancing around the dark space with its flashing lights and multiple stages, fighting to get his equilibrium in the pounding music from the speakers, especially with different songs and beats coming from different directions, Revik felt like he’d been transported back in time.

His light reacted to more than one set of stimuli, but the one he felt the most made it hardest to think clearly?a dense thread of near-desperation in the part of his light that felt Allie’s absence most strongly.

They were close now. He could feel that, too.

It created a paradox in his light?both relaxing the most frantic part of him, and twisting his worry into something a hell of a lot more violent. And focused.

His light fed those impulses in both directions, even as he tried not to speculate as to what she might be doing here, and who might have her.

More than anything, he felt the part of him that knew there was no way in hell he was letting her leave this place without him?even if it meant aborting the rest of the op and taking a good chunk of the city out in the process.

As a result, he barely took in the landscape other than to feed or suppress one or the other of those warring impulses.

Mostly-naked bodies writhed on raised mirrored platforms to pounding, bass-heavy music as he passed. Revik noted the location of each stage, as well as exits, bars, staff and specific clusters of customers in sharp glances as he walked.

He also noted which of them were carrying.

Seven bartenders total, four bar-backs, eight wait staff.

He had to assume guns behind the bar, given the type of place it was, private security, at least one panic room, possibly gas and lock-down walls.

He guessed roughly four hundred non-staff people currently milled inside the club. There would undoubtedly be more in the back rooms he’d glimpsed and marked with his eyes. They’d have private dances back there, and, down some of those dimly lit halls, full-fledged unwilling transactions for Sark fetish, bdsm, group light-sharings and whatever else.

They were past the smaller stages now, and approaching the main stage of the club, the only one with curtains and a full-sized floor. The white-robed trader was likely leading them there, or to a seat near it, since the stage itself remained to their right and ahead.

He’d already gotten confirmation the buyer was Dontan.

That was something, although Revik had trouble being overjoyed with the news.

As for the slave trader, his name was Efrail. Clan Maresk, with which Revik had a passing familiarity. That particular clan came out of Afghanistan, so their new pal, Efrail, may actually have grown up in this part of the world.

Revik filed the information away, still not convinced Efrail himself was anything more than a parasite, living on the underside of Shadow’s city. He was unwilling to bank on that fact, much less make any assumptions that factored him out as a threat, but most of Revik’s focus shifted elsewhere. Mainly, he watched the security goons stationed at strategic points around the room, presumably Dontan’s people, since he owned the club.

Parasite or no, Efrail clearly had ties to some of the heavy hitters in Dubai, so might prove useful even beyond getting Allie back. Revik intended to learn more about his particular breed of cockroach in any case, as the knowledge might prove useful in other Shadow cities. If nothing else, their little tour of Dubai convinced Revik that every one of these fucking places needed to be burned to the ground.

As he approached the black-painted stage, another, harder flare in Revik’s light told him they were closer than he’d realized.

That pretty much wiped everything else out of his mind, in terms of priorities. It also made him stumble, although he’d recovered his gait by the time he took his next step.

Allie was definitely here. In this building.

The understanding made it a lot more difficult to control his light, but it also hardened his resolve into full-fledged war mode.

He still couldn’t make himself look at Dalejem.

He knew most of that was anger at himself. As much as he hated to admit it, he more or less agreed with Surli; he never should have let them take her. He should have broken Efrail’s fucking neck?found some way to hide his and his guards’ bodies in shipping crates long enough for him, Dalejem and Allie to take the train into Dubai.

Even knowing it was primarily himself he was mad at, Revik knew he couldn’t be rational with the other male right then, for a lot of reasons. He couldn’t really be rational with any of them, not when it came to this, but he’d taken over the military side of things anyway.

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