Page 76 of Seer Prophet

Despite their back and forth jokes, a few of themwerealarmed, he knew.

The jokes were their way of defusing that.

Loki felt Illeg watching him the most closely of all, followed perhaps by Anale and Ontari. Despite his words just then, only Rex seemed to find the whole thing genuinely amusing.

Eventually, Loki pushed that out of his mind, too.

The Sword had given him a job.

He would do that job, just as he told the Sword he would.

When he glanced at the human next, she was lowering her weight reluctantly back to her seat. Loki still felt her pulling on his light, but less insistently now, more in reflex from the background currents weaving through both of theiraleimi.At least some of what he had been thinking must have passed to her. The human’s expression shifted, holding a stonier, but more accepting form of worry. Like she got, somehow, that Loki had to do this, but she did not like it.

The fact that she did not want him to go only made the pain in Loki’s light worse.

“We’d better get him out of here,” Illeg muttered.

Laughing, Rex seemed to agree.

Grabbing hold of Loki’s armored vest, he began dragging him down the aisle to the forward hatch. Holo reached it just in front of them, and Loki watched as he yanked down on the locking bar to swivel the hatch open on its metal hinge.

Holo swung it all the way open, until it caught and locked.

Then, looking down, he used his foot to engage the lowering of the metal stairs.

Loki did not let himself look at Gina again.

Even so, he found himself aware of her, aware in every part of his body and light, during those few minutes it took to get himself off the Chinook.

Chapter17

White House

Loki’s boots hit the grass. Hisaleimicontinued to pull on the woman’s in the background, but once he’d landed on the muddy, water-soaked ground, his head felt marginally clearer, perhaps just from being outside the aircraft.

He could breathe freely again.

He glanced back at the Chinook a last time before Jax gripped his vest, dragging him deeper into the area of the old lawn and away from what his light still wanted.

“I am sorry, brother,” Loki murmured, glancing at the shorter, East Indian seer. “Truly.”

Jax gave him a more serious look than most of the others. He clapped him on the back, studying his eyes. “No apologies, brother Loki. You might need a chaperone until we get you back to the carrier, but no apologies are required.I guess it was just your day.”

Loki nodded at the seer expression, not answering.

He still found himself fighting his own light.

Slowly pulling his equilibrium back to center, he shifted his eyes around where they stood. He focused with an effort on the White House grounds, on the physical details of their location. They’d landed about twenty meters from the door to the reception hall below the South Portico.

The transformation of the building struck him with force now that he could see it all without the intervening windows of the Chinook.

It differed markedly from the out-of-date virtual schematic the Sword provided.

It differed even more from the building he helped the Sword breach a few years previous, when that Rook, Terian, held the Bridge captive here.

Dirt and scorch marks rode in twisting patterns up several of the white columns. The dirt looked mostly to be weathering from storms, but the fires were likely human and seer made. Broken furniture, burned cloth, plastic, and other refuse covered much of the lawn directly below the portico, as if thrown there from the upstairs balcony.

The grass had already grown wild, depending on where it lived in relation to the swampy earth and deeper pools of water. Loki saw an equal number of bald, muddy patches filled with tire ruts and garbage as he did those denser clumps of field-high grasses mixed with dandelions, thistles, wildflowers, reeds, and swamp grasses. Broader-leafed plants grew in bushes next to young trees, breaking up the prior expanse of lawn.

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