by Nalini Singh
Sascha Duncan is the pickup. As a cardinal empath, she had to know Vasic’s mate, Ivy Jane Zen. Vasic could well already have the necessary visual to anchor a teleport.
His theory was borne out when Aden said, Vasic will contact Sascha to arrange pickup.
Thank you. Then he thought of the silent request he’d made and that Aden had promised to fulfill. I’ll need you there when it’s time to do the test.
Aden was quiet for a moment. Build your shields and do the test, Ethan. I won’t lose one of my Arrows without cause—and this is a new world. We don’t know all its secrets and we can’t predict what our brains will do freed of the shackles of Silence. I’ll be there. Should I bring Memory?
As they drove out into the orange-red of the setting sun, Loyal panting in the backseat, Ethan thought of how his rogue power reacted to Memory, the ferocity of it. Control would be meaningless unless truly tested. Yes.
Dropping out of the telepathic connection, he turned to look at Selenka. Her jaw was clenched, her cheeks flushed, and her hands tight on the steering wheel. “It’s all set up. First the shields, then the test.”
Her claws erupted from the tips of her fingers. “All the way, Ethan. We test this all the fucking way. I am not losing my mate.”
Her growl was a vibration in his bones by the time they pulled up at the HQ with five minutes to spare—thanks to Selenka’s reflexes. She could drive at lethal speed without error. Entering, they strode toward the back—but Ivo popped out his head from a room before they reached the courtyard.
“Cake?” The slender male, dark circles under his eyes but black jeans and aqua blue shirt sharply pressed, held out a saucer with a large red wedge iced in white. “Chaos”—a glance at Ethan—“that’s the bears’ head chef, dropped a giant cake off in thanks for me sourcing a rare spice for him a couple of weeks back.”
Grabbing the saucer, Selenka took a huge bite, mumbling around it. It sounded something like: “Ghreet, nowam eatin bear cak.”
Ethan waved off the offer of a slice, while Loyal walked over to peer out the back door into the courtyard. “Are you a cook, too?”
“No, I’m an eating specialist who has a vested interest in making friends with chefs.” Ivo bit into the slice he’d offered Ethan. “And I need the sugar to keep me going. Disciples come off clean as fucking snow, but I don’t buy it. Somebody in that group is brilliant with sleight-of-hand financial tricks, and my money is on Blaise.”
“No shady paper trails?” Selenka asked after demolishing her cake.
Licking off frosting from his upper lip, Ivo shook his head.
“Any indication Blaise—or Nomani—have advanced financial training?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean anything. I learned most of my superskills”—he wiggled the fingers of one hand—“out of interest and obsessive determination.”
“Ivo can hack into most Psy databases with one hand tied behind his back,” Selenka told Ethan. “Don’t give him access to your devices unless you want him knowing your bank account details.”
“Hey!” Ivo threw up his hands. “Just because I look doesn’t mean I’d ever use the information. I have principles!”
Snorting, Selenka jerked her head toward the courtyard.
It was softly lit against the night sky with strings of warm gold-hued lights that crisscrossed the area at roof level. He hadn’t noticed them at all in the daytime, but, then again, he hadn’t exactly been in the best frame of mind.
Today, his eyes went to the woman who now stood in the center of the courtyard, arms folded and feet set apart. Undaunted by her stance, he crossed the distance to her—and he touched her, because his mate was a wolf . . . and because he needed the contact. Though she didn’t pull away when he cupped her cheek, she didn’t soften.
He brushed his lips over hers.
When she still didn’t soften, he repeated the action over and over while stroking his thumb over her jaw. It took an eon for her to part her lips, even longer for her to put her hands at his waist. Her eyes were slits of gold when he lifted his head.
“Fast learner,” she said, her voice husky. “But I will still kick your ass if you allow the fear Ming put in you to win.”
“You can’t,” he said, going with instinct. “I’m an Arrow.”
A taut moment before she threw back her head and laughed.
Ethan was drinking in that sound, long-buried parts of him stretching and reaching for it, when he felt a prickling at the back of his neck. He turned to find Ivo escorting out Vasic, a heavily muscled male, and a woman with cardinal eyes.
The teleporter, his left uniform sleeve pinned neatly back to the stump where his arm had been removed, spoke to Ethan. “Sascha has my contact details for when she needs to leave. Memory and Aden are both in the city, within a fast drive of this location.” He teleported out before Ethan could thank him.
Sascha Duncan looked nothing like her mother. She was tall, her skin honey brown, and her hair a soft ebony. She wore it in a single braid and was dressed in slimline tailored pants in black. The pants had tiny pink flowers on them, the color picked up by her silky long-sleeved top that was cuffed at the wrists and had a floppy bow at the neck.
On her wrist was a bracelet made up of small, colorful blocks that spelled out her name. It fit with nothing else in her outfit, but Ethan knew what it was—a gift from a child. Zaira had a similar bracelet, created for her by two of the children in the Valley, the sunlit place that was the new home of the Arrow Squad.
Then those eyes of cardinal starlight landed on Ethan.
The Architect
Three Consortium power players tracked using Cray’s intel. Two are in custody. The third was killed when she decided to respond with weapons drawn.
—Abbot Storm, Strike Team Epsilon, to Aden Kai
FINDING EZRA HAD been a revelation. It had shown the Architect how to unearth more of her kind. More of the new breed of Psy. Ezra had also given her another gift—he’d shown her what she could do if given access to other Scarab minds. Ezra had been cooperative, even thankful for her intervention; he’d been full of terror, clutched at the safety rope she offered. It had made things so much easier.
Now she had a thread that linked her to him, him to her. As the empathic Honeycomb was meant to link all the minds in the PsyNet, creating a strong foundation for their race.
A Honeycomb link was said to stave off madness, but the Architect had seen the truth with the lens of her new power: it had always been a mechanism of control and surveillance, all of them constantly monitored by those who thought themselves rulers of the Psy. She’d broken the connection during a period of chaos; no one had noticed. The empath linked to her probably believed she’d linked to another E in the aftermath.
But the Architect wasn’t about to be a puppet.
No, she would be the puppet master, the spider with a network of powerful minds willing and ready to serve her. Enslaved in a way that made it seem a joy to serve. Ezra had been the first. Tonight, she’d found a fourth and he was full of lightning bolts that spoke of immense power.
Releasing a single virus that she’d delicately and patiently worked so it wouldn’t kill, but simply . . . encourage the other mind to be receptive to her own, she didn’t immediately target the mind with the virus. Perhaps it would be better to do what she’d done with Ezra and ask for entry.
It was a pity the virus didn’t work so neatly with normal minds. She’d tested it on five subjects after first becoming aware of her ability. All five had gone mad and died by their own hand. Oh well, they were beneath her anyway. As were the panicked questions coming in from the stupid in the Consortium who’d permitted themselves to make connections with Cray. She had far more important things to occupy her mind.
There was a miracle taking place among the Psy.
The growth of a new people.
A better people.
The PsyNet belonged to the Architect and her brethren . . . her children.
Chapter 38
It’s time. Prepare.
—The Architect
SASCHA DUNCAN WAS far from the first cardinal Ethan had ever met, but the sight of her eyes still had a visceral impact. Cardinal eyes were the most extraordinary eyes in the world. A sweep of obsidian dotted with white “stars,” their eyes were pieces of captured night sky. Each set was said to be unique; however, Ethan had never spent enough time with different cardinals side by side to compare. But that Sascha was a power was indisputable.
Her psychic energy pulsed in the air in the same way as Selenka’s alpha strength. But where Selenka’s power was aggressive, a thing of claws and teeth and dominance, Sascha’s was water that just moved around all obstacles in its path.
Selenka half laughed, half groaned right then. “Healer.”
Sascha’s lips curved. “Alpha.” A gently affectionate reply. “I live with one—claws and growls don’t work on me, I’m afraid.”
“Your mate is a cat,” Selenka rumbled. “Wolves are very different.”
“That’s what Lucas keeps telling me,” Sascha said with a light in her eyes that said she wasn’t buying it. “This is Clay.” She indicated the green-eyed male at her side.
His hair was black against dark skin, as were the cargo pants he wore with a plain gray T-shirt. That he was a dominant predator wasn’t in question, but he wasn’t a wolf. No, there was something intrinsically feline about his movements.
Selenka and the leopard shook hands, two predators sizing each other up.
Leaving them to it, Sascha directed her next words at Ethan. “We should speak alone so we can concentrate.”
“Clay and I will wait in the HQ,” Selenka said, before she hauled Ethan down for a kiss, the wet heat a branding. “Everything, Ethan. You deserve everything. Fight for it.”
Her touch, her words, lingered long after she strode into the building. Clay’s shadow didn’t budge after the male stepped inside the doorway.
“Clay’s stubborn,” Sascha murmured, catching Ethan’s look. “I told him you wouldn’t hurt me, and he gave me the ‘look’ dominants reserve for healers and empaths.”
“It’s a wise precaution in unfamiliar territory.”
“See?” came a growling rumble from inside the doorway. “The Arrow agrees with me.”
Lips twitching, Sascha said, “We’ll go sit in those outdoor chairs at the far end, where big cat ears can’t hear us.”
Once seated, Ethan said, “You’ll need to look inside my mind?”
Sascha’s expression turned solemn, no humor in her now. “That’s really why I wanted to speak to you alone—allowing someone inside your mind is a thing that requires great trust, and you don’t know me.” Leaning forward, she braced her forearms on her thighs. “I’m willing to answer any questions you have, tell you what you need to feel that trust.”
“It’s not necessary.” Ethan didn’t budge. “I’ve decided.”
Sascha looked at him for a long moment. “And once you decide, that’s it,” she said, and it wasn’t a question. “Right, then let’s get down to it.” She sat back up, suddenly a cardinal blazing with power where before she’d been an empath, gentle and kind. “First things first—risk factors?”
Ethan told her about his ability to utilize light as a weapon. “There is a minor chance it’ll go wild during the shield-building process while I’m between shields.”
“We’ll build the new ones first,” Sascha clarified. “They’ll be up before you lower the old ones.” The cardinal shook out her shoulders. “Ready?”
“Yes.”
The mental knock against his mind was soft.
It took incredible effort to force himself to lower his public shields, the ones that kept his mind private from the world. No one had been inside his mind since the day he broke free of Ming. But Sascha’s psychic presence had nothing in common with the former Councilor’s. She was also scrupulous in sticking to a path that led only and directly to his inner shields.
It took her time to investigate those shields, but when she finished, it was with a frown even darker than Memory’s. “I do sense a massive power behind your shields, but your mind doesn’t have the feel of one that’s disintegrating.”
“There’s no other explanation for such a violent power rising to the surface after a lifetime of dormancy.” Ming would’ve certainly taken advantage of any power of Ethan’s, especially as he’d been a child when he went into the squad, without the ability to hide anything. “My mind sublimated it for a reason.”
Sascha parted her lips before shaking her head. “We’ll argue about the what and the why later. First, the shields.” She began to throw telepathic instructions at him after requesting access to his mind once more. Ten minutes into it, he realized she was designing his shields from scratch. Her myriad instructions were intended to expose both his strengths and his weaknesses in the area.
Ethan had thought Ming a master shield builder, and there was no question the former Councilor was brilliant at caging minds, but this delicacy of construction was on another level. “Does Aden know you can do this?” he asked halfway through.
“Hmm?” Frowning, she shot him another instruction. “We’ve never talked specifically on the topic.”
“Can I report to him about what you’re building for me?” He had a deep need to give back to the squad that had embraced him when he couldn’t even embrace himself. “I think you could build better shields for some of the squad.”
“Sure.” Sascha’s attention was obviously on his mind. “I like shield mechanics and we always have Arrows around at the empathic training compound.” The instructions came again, so hard and fast that he had to narrow his focus to a tight beam to keep up.
He was sweating by the time she called things to a halt, his heart pounding.
He felt no surprise when his mate walked out with nutrient drinks. Taking one, while Sascha accepted the other, he leaned his head against Selenka’s thigh as she stood by his side.
“Ethan,” Sascha said after finishing her drink, “I saw a lot while I was inside your mind.” No threat or boast in her tone. “I’m not talking about secrets or memories. I’m talking about what you call the rogue power—whatever it is that you have corralled behind those shields is devastatingly powerful. But it feels familiar.”
“Scarab abilities are ordinary abilities supercharged,” Ethan pointed out.
Sascha nodded in reluctant agreement. “I need to be there when you drop your shield. If not me, then another E you trust. You also need a Psy who’s had enough contact with a large range of psychic abilities—including unusual ones—that they’re capable of recognizing what it is that exists behind your shields.”
“I can—” Ethan began.
“No.” The cardinal’s tone was unexpectedly hard. “You’re deeply biased. You’ve been conditioned to see it as a threat.”
“I’ve asked Aden to be there, too,” Ethan said, realizing he hadn’t mentioned that to Selenka. “As a protective measure.”
Selenka narrowed her eyes at him but nodded. “As long as he doesn’t try to override your mate.” She played with his hair while she tapped her foot. “With non-pack players involved, we can’t do the experiment at the main den like I originally suggested. But I’ve got an idea of another place that—”
A scream of agony speared through Ethan’s skull. It was so strong, so loud, that it took him a split second to realize it came from the PsyNet. Opening his eyes on the psychic plane, he saw a tidal wave of lightning bolts. Crash after crash, all of it pounding at a section of the Net already in danger of fatal collapse.
A single look and he knew the area was home to tens of thousands.
He got in the way of that power but didn’t have the
strength to hold it back for longer than a second or two. Then a dark midnight power joined his. “I have it,” said a voice as dark, the power behind it so vast that Ethan knew who it was at once: Kaleb Krychek, cardinal telekinetic. But seeing the depth of his power in action, Ethan knew without a doubt that Kaleb was more. Perhaps one of the mythical dual cardinals.
“The PsyNet is buckling here,” the other man said.
“It’s not buckling,” Ethan responded. “It’s under attack by waves of power from a focused source.” And if Kaleb couldn’t see it, it had to be connected with Scarab.
“Follow it,” Krychek said at once. “Find the source.”
Ethan was already moving before Kaleb spoke, driven by the need to protect tens of thousands of people who didn’t deserve to die just because someone had decided to push a PsyNet breach into a catastrophic failure.
Ethan would not sit aside and be a witness to wholesale murder.
Ahead of him, the lightning flashes began to flicker and lose shape, but he could still see the faint afterglow they left in the Net. He caught the last glimpse just before the energy disappeared into a particular mind. I have it, he telepathed to Krychek. Coordinates as follows.
Aden is on the way to intercept. I must seal this breach. Watch for another strike and send out a warning to us both.
On the physical plane, Ethan was aware of Selenka standing with her hand in his hair, while Sascha rose and said her good-byes. His mate knew he wasn’t fully present, but she didn’t push for him to return . . . and he understood. She might be furious with him for inadvertently delaying the experiment, but she would not supersede his decisions—because she wasn’t his alpha. She was his mate.
It wasn’t until some time later that Aden confirmed the target had been acquired, and Ethan dropped out of the Net.