by Nalini Singh
He woke to Ivo sitting in the chair opposite, the otherwise empty courtyard surrounded by night and lit by the soft glow of the strings of lights he’d noticed earlier. “How long?” he asked after taking the nutrient drink the other man held out.
“Ninety minutes.” Dropping the large tablet he’d been working on into his lap, the lieutenant ran a hand over his smooth-shaven scalp, revealing the titanium of a bracelet Ethan had seen on him each time they met. “Selenka had to return to the den—a juvenile managed to injure himself pretty badly doing a stupid stunt. As alpha, Selenka can share pack energy with the healers and the wounded.”
Ethan thought of how Selenka had known of Emanuel’s death, understood she was bonded to her pack by blood. “Will the juvenile be all right?” BlackEdge couldn’t take another loss, another hurt.
“Dinara’s the one who responded first after the accident—she messaged me just before you woke to say he’s out of the woods. Except for having to face the maternals after he’s up and running.” Ivo whistled. “Would not want to be him. They’re so nice and make things all homey—until you cross them. Then—” He drew a finger blade across his throat.
Ethan guessed that “maternals” were part of the wolf hierarchy, but it was a question he shelved in favor of another. “Where’s Loyal?” When Ivo looked blank, he said, “My dog.”
“Oh, the skinny guy. I got him a treat; then Selya took him back with her. She thought he might get distressed with you unresponsive.”
Shoulders easing, Ethan took in the other man again. “Why are you here?”
A raised eyebrow. “You were out of it, Ethan. Selenka wasn’t about to leave you helpless—and neither would any of us.” His next words held an intensity that was a wolf’s fur against Ethan’s skin. “She’s our heart and you’re hers.”
The words hit him hard—as did the realization of his vulnerability. Always before while on the psychic plane, he’d continued to be fully aware of the physical plane. It looked like following the lightning strikes, however, caused a full physical detachment. “Did she say anything about the location for an experiment I intend to run?”
Ivo nodded, but the comm on Ethan’s gauntlet went off before he could speak.
“Take that.” The lieutenant rose, and in that move was evidence of the fluid muscle Ethan had seen the night Ivo helped move the body of his murdered friend. “I have to use the head anyway.”
Ethan was unsurprised to find Aden’s face on the screen built into the gauntlet. “How,” the squad leader said, “did you find the source of the power surge?”
“I tracked its signature. You can’t see it?” he asked, to confirm what he’d realized after Kaleb entered the Net.
“Nobody can see it. We’ve been assuming the Net is fracturing because of the underlying disintegration. We had no reason to believe the damage was being exacerbated by violent surges of power.”
“Earlier collapses may have been simpler. Kaleb did see a ripple in the Net today.”
“It’s becoming increasingly difficult to hold the Net together—this type of concentrated attack could make it impossible.” Aden’s face was tired. “Are you available for teleport pickup?”
Ethan looked up to see Ivo walking back to him. “A moment.” Muting his end of the call, he spoke to the man who was now his packmate.
“Coming with you.” Ivo’s expression was resolute. “Your eyes aren’t quite all there yet.”
Ethan understood brotherhood now—both among the squad and in the pack. So he simply nodded, then confirmed the pickup with Aden. “Out in front of BlackEdge’s city HQ,” he said, he and Ivo walking out together.
Vasic arrived moments later. The teleporter was now wearing a metal prosthetic that had colored lines of electronics and what appeared to be veins. Not a man who spoke often, Vasic just met their gazes in greeting before completing the ’port.
And Ethan found himself in a screamingly white corridor broken up only by hard plas chairs of dull gray that were bolted to the wall—and an unnaturally green plant that proved to be fake.
The walls threatened to close in on him.
Chapter 39
Create fail-safe switch in servant minds in case of capture. Difficulty level apt to be very high. Begin work on it at once.
—Note to self from the Architect
“WHERE ARE WE?” Ethan asked, fighting his revulsion; the place reminded him strongly of the infirmary where he’d been taken after his physical punishments.
“PsyMed SF Echo,” said the woman of medium height who stood with Aden, her English holding a lilting accent and her curvy body clad in a tailored black jumpsuit around the neck of which hung a plain old stethoscope—a device that had survived all the ages of modernity.
“I’m Dr. Maia Ndiaye.” Her eyes were large, the shade a dark brown flecked with amber, her skin blue-black, and her hair obscured by a vivid green scarf that she wore wrapped around her hair in a complicated pattern.
From his research, Dr. Ndiaye was a forty-one-year-old M-Psy with a specialization in neurology who hit 9.3 on the Gradient, but her face had no lines of age, and her presence didn’t pulse with power. She’d grown up in Silence, he realized, likely had intense control over what she projected.
“The target you pinpointed.” Aden nodded toward a door not far from them.
When Ethan looked through the window at the top of that door, it was to see a thin blond woman sitting in a high-tech hospital bed. Dressed in pale blue pajama pants and a matching top, she was staring straight ahead at the wall in front of her, her lips moving.
Ethan’s muscles locked.
“We found her in this state,” Aden said quietly. “She hasn’t come out of it.”
“It could be a deep fugue state.” Dr. Ndiaye’s voice didn’t alter in pitch or tone, but Ethan sensed a type of concern that had him reassessing his initial view of her as entombed in Silence. “Her mind displays the classic symptoms of Scarab—per all the confirmed cases to date.”
A flicker to the right, Memory Aven-Rose and her mate appearing with Kaleb Krychek. The empath flinched as if hit hard by a painful object, her head jerking toward the room that held the patient.
“Scarab,” she said. “Definitely.” A deep inhale, an embrace with her mate, then she walked through the door.
As Ethan watched, she touched her hand to the patient’s hand and held it there. The woman blinked not long afterward, shook her head, and focused on Memory. “Qui es-tu?” she asked. “Où suis-je?”
Ethan didn’t know French, but Dr. Ndiaye did and translated: “Who are you? Where am I?”
While Memory murmured to the woman, and Dr. Ndiaye slipped in to join them, Aden spoke to Ethan. “It looks like you can track sufferers of Scarab Syndrome when they begin to lose control and surrender to the urge to free their powers.” He glanced in the direction of the patient room. “We don’t know why she decided to attack the integrity of the PsyNet, but I need you to maintain a watch for any others like her.”
Ethan thought about the lightning echoes, the ghosts he saw constantly. “Aden, there are a lot. I can’t track them until they go active and use their power, but their signature is all over the PsyNet.”
Aden’s dark eyes evidenced no surprise. He’d expected it, Ethan realized, was braced for it. Braced for anarchy. “Rest,” the leader of the squad said, thrusting one hand through the short strands of his hair. “We’re going to need you in the battles to come.”
Ethan didn’t step away. “What about you? I can see exhaustion in every inch of you.”
Aden’s responding glance held rueful acknowledgment. “Zaira’s threatened to tie me to our bed if I’m not back in an hour and ready to rest.” A frown. “When is the experiment? Zaira knows I have to be present for that.”
The power surges inside Ethan had grown to a point where intervention was urgent, but he
was nearly swaying on his feet. Surrendering to the inevitable, he said, “I’ll need to get some downtime before I can continue. I’ll contact Zaira when I need you.”
Then he asked Vasic to take him and Ivo back to the pickup point.
Once there, the wolf lieutenant nodded toward a vehicle parked nearby, the street night-quiet. “Better if you’re in den territory if you’re going to crash.”
Ethan’s head felt heavy as he took the passenger seat, his eyes threatening to close. As he struggled to keep them open, Ivo started up the engine. “Take a nap. You’re wiped.”
Ethan wasn’t used to just shutting down and leaving his well-being in another’s hands, but this man had already kept watch while Ethan wasn’t mentally present. “One day, I’ll return the favor,” he managed to get out before his eyes shut.
“Next time I decide to lose my mind and have a beer or five with a bear, I’ll expect you to be my wingman.”
Ethan didn’t understand the reference, but he was too tired to follow it up. Relaxing into the seat, he permitted his mind to slip into sleep. A curtain fell over his thoughts, the last thing he felt a kiss along the mating bond.
* * *
—
“ETHAN, wake up.”
He came awake at once at the urgency of Ivo’s tone, but opened his lashes a bare fraction, using the caution of a man who’d often woken in an unfriendly situation. Their vehicle was stationary on a quiet road Ethan recognized as being about ten minutes from den territory.
In front of them was a fallen tree that blocked the path forward, a small dark-colored truck crumpled half-under it.
Ethan lifted his lashes, scanned the area. “I sense two changeling minds.”
Leaning on the steering wheel, his eyes nightglow, Ivo said, “That’s an old tree, could’ve come down on its own . . . but I don’t like it. Nice and convenient to have it happen while someone’s trying to kill Selenka’s lieutenants.” His voice held none of its customary lightness, his tone hard. “Are the two minds in the truck?”
“One is either inside or very close to it. The other is in the trees.” Ethan couldn’t get much more than that without attempting a psychic breach.
Ivo opened his door after a careful scan of the area. “I can’t hear anything and I won’t scent anything until I’m closer. My gut doesn’t like it, but I have to check in case two of our people had an accident. That truck looks like some in our fleet, and one person could’ve been thrown out.”
Ethan went to open his door but Ivo shook his head. “Stay back. Moon’s out, but it’s still pretty dark. I usually drive home alone—if it is an ambush, you can be a nice unwelcome surprise.”
“Understood.” With the moon providing enough light to fuel him even without the assistance of light sources such as his phone, Ethan could assist from a distance, so it made sense for Ivo to make the initial reconnaissance, while Ethan watched his back. “Call it in before you go.”
Ivo did that in silence by sending a message via his phone, then left quietly, without latching his door. Ethan watched him with unrelenting focus . . . and just barely glimpsed the shadow rising from in front of the crumpled truck, its arm lifted in a firing stance.
Ethan shot a bolt of light through the glass of the windscreen. As it shattered around him, he was aware of two things—first, his blow hadn’t hit the target but the vehicle, and second, the other mind he’d sensed had used his distraction to move closer. Close enough to point a weapon at Ethan’s temple.
His response was the result of years of Arrow training—and a grim fury that anyone would dare hurt Selenka in such a way. He dropped sideways into the seat while unclipping the seat belt. The laser fire cut over his head, close enough to singe, but he was already kicking the door open—right into the would-be assassin’s body. He was outside the door a split second later. The shooter was in the midst of attempting to swing the weapon back in his direction.
A burst of light and the assailant was down.
He looked up to find Ivo standing unmoving over his assailant’s body, his claws dripping and his formerly pristine shirt flecked with wet shadows. From the thrust of her breasts as she lay on her back, he could tell the second assailant had been female. Her mind no longer existed on the psychic plane.
She was dead. And Ivo wasn’t moving.
After using ties from his pocket to immobilize the male who’d attacked him, Ethan walked over to Ivo, driven by an instinct he couldn’t understand—one that told him the lieutenant needed him. But he didn’t touch Ivo. Instead, he crouched down beside the woman’s bloody body, her abdomen torn out by wolf claws.
Death spasms meant she still clutched her weapon.
“Set to kill.” He indicated the clearly visible setting. “At that range, it would’ve liquefied your brains. One of you had to die.”
The lieutenant took a long breath, exhaled harshly. “It’s Blaise’s sister, Nomani.” A look over at where Ethan’s assailant lay next to their vehicle. “Blaise is alive?”
“Yes.” Ethan had recognized him from the images he’d downloaded of the church leader after the intrusion onto BlackEdge land.
“Good.” Ivo’s bunched shoulders eased up a fraction. “Selenka’s going to want to question him.”
With Ivo still emotionally unstable, Ethan was the one who called Selenka, and he felt the fury of her rage along the mating bond, her wolf ready to tear down the world. But she said, “Look out for Ivo.”
Once he’d hung up, Ethan went to their vehicle and found a bottle of water in the back, which he took back to the wolf. “To wash your hands.” Ivo hadn’t yet retracted his claws, and Ethan could tell the blood bothered him.
The other man didn’t say a word as they stepped away from the scene, but took care to wash his hands with attention to detail, while Ethan poured the water in a steady stream. Only once his claws were free of blood did he retract them. He then washed his palms off. And when Ethan shrugged off his uniform jacket and said, “You’re more slender than I am. It’ll fit,” Ivo didn’t refuse the gesture.
He took off his blood-splattered shirt, used a clean edge to wipe off any blood on his skin, then pulled on the jacket over a bare chest. “Spasibo.” A rough word, a short nod, Ivo’s eyes not quite meeting his.
The bloody shirt and empty water bottle in hand, Ethan said, “I hate being shut up in rooms without light. The walls crush me until I can’t breathe.”
Ivo froze . . . then met Ethan’s eyes again, his own nightglow with the wolf. He nodded slowly. “We’re all a little fucked up.” A slight smile, a deep release of the tension in his muscles. “Thanks for that warning shot. She was just out of sight, the angle I was walking. If you hadn’t turned the night ablaze, I might be lying there with liquefied brains.”
Features grim but no longer distraught in that quiet, withdrawn way, Ivo glanced at the body before the two of them began to walk back to their vehicle. “This is technically still our territory,” Ivo told Ethan as he put the bloody shirt and empty bottle in back. “The only vehicles that use this road are those coming in and out from BlackEdge.”
“Does this attack seem strange to you? It’s after ten at night, for one.”
“That’s not so strange.” Ivo shrugged. “The HQ has a five percent better data link. I’ve been known to work till all hours there, then drive home.” Despite his words, he was scowling. “But I crash in the HQ just as often, so it’s a lot of trouble to go to, on the off chance they’d get me. Unless the fuckers were happy to settle for any BlackEdge wolf.”
Ethan shook his head. “There’s too much risk in this—they had to hit a high-ranking target for it to pay off.”
Ivo parted his lips, then paused, head angled. “Jetcycle coming in from the city.”
Ethan didn’t pick up the sound for another half a minute. When the jetcycle came to a stop beside their vehicle not long afterward, th
e man who took off his helmet proved to be Selenka’s father. He took in the scene, his pupils flaring. “Bozhe moi, what have you done?”
Ethan went motionless. “You aren’t surprised to see these two here.” It was a sense inside him that he couldn’t explain.
Mouth tightening, Selenka’s father snarled, “I don’t have to explain myself to some Psy interloper.”
As Ivo growled deep in his chest, Ethan lifted a hand limned with light. “I can burn out your irises and leave you blind, or, if you prefer, I can amputate your arms and legs. Or you can answer my questions.”
Kiev Durev’s cheeks went hot with color. “You wouldn’t dare.”
Ethan sliced horizontal stripes across the other man’s arms, each line flawless. The smell of burned flesh hit the air as Kiev screamed.
“I have no loyalty to you,” Ethan said, “and I have no desire to protect you. If you are a threat to Selenka, I will end you right now.”
Whimpering, Kiev stared at Ivo. “Do something!”
Ivo folded his arms.
Kiev snarled before turning back to Ethan, his face red. “She’ll hate you for hurting me.”
That might well be true, but Ethan would still protect her. “Are you prepared to answer or shall I perform the first amputation?” He lifted a hand licked by shadowlight.
Flinching, Kiev began talking. “Blaise wanted me to help smooth things over with the pack, with Selenka, that’s all.”
“His people would’ve burned our territory.” Ivo’s voice trembled, the words hard to understand, they were so rough.
“It was only youths being stupid,” Kiev argued. “At least he was respectful when he called me—he understood he had to go through the pack’s elders. Now look what you’ve done!” A pointed glance at the bloody body by the fallen tree. “The world already thinks changelings uncivilized monsters; you’ve proven them right.”
“What was your task here tonight?” Ethan had an idea and it was turning his blood to black ice; he wanted to end Kiev Durev then and there.