by Nalini Singh
That was another thing—why did he keep calling her an E? She knew about the newly rediscovered designation, had watched the comm reports with fascination, but she wasn’t one of them. The Es were healers of the mind, and Memory was no healer. She was a monster.
The bite she’d taken threatened to get stuck in her throat, but she made herself swallow. She had to become strong so she could tear Renault to pieces. Her one vulnerability was gone. She’d buried her affectionate Jitterbug under the open sky as she’d promised. Renault had nothing to hold over her anymore, no living creature he could threaten to harm when she got too intransigent.
“Renault,” she managed to get out past her ugly distaste. “His name is Erasmus David Renault and he is a murderer who likes to slowly strangle his victims to the edge of death, then bring them back, only to do it over and over again. When their brains finally shut down, their hearts dead, he hacks off a piece of their hair as a souvenir.”
The golden wolf had gone motionless at her first words. “How do you know?”
“He told me,” Memory lied, because while shut up in her cage for months at a time between Renault’s “outings,” she’d grown and educated herself. At first, she’d done so by using the teaching programs Renault had given her. He’d needed her functional and unremarkable when they were in the world, with the expected knowledge for a girl—then woman—of her age and apparent status.
It had grated on Memory that she was falling in line with his plans, but even as a child, she’d understood that education was a weapon she might one day be able to turn against her captor. Her mother had always said, “Study hard, Memory. The more you know, the more control you have over your future.”
So she’d knuckled down and gone through program after program. She’d also watched everything she could find on the comm about the outside world, read every book she could download. Renault had cut off her ability to contact anyone outside, but he hadn’t monitored her reading or entertainment-comm accounts—which he’d set up because he was clever enough to know she’d go insane if left with no outlet for her mind.
Her murderous captor had needed her sane.
As a result of her compulsive drive to prepare for a freedom she’d never given up on attaining, Memory knew how normal people behaved. She also knew one thing for an unqualified truth: Alexei the golden SnowDancer wolf had helped her because he thought she was a victim.
She couldn’t reveal that she was a nightmare.
Chapter 7
Breach detected. Alert in progress.
—Security Log, SNM: Owner EDR
E. DAVID RENAULT, known to his associates as Renault, had been in a meeting he couldn’t leave without causing uncomfortable questions when the alert hit his wrist unit. The sleek unit didn’t light up or broadcast a disruptive ping; it simply buzzed against his skin in a highly specific pattern.
The bunker had been breached.
Memory’s mind slipped from his grasp at nearly the same instant.
Renault had forced himself not to move, not to stiffen, though his own mind raced. He’d had no way to wire the bunker to alert him to a rogue teleporter—Memory’s presence and that of her geriatric cat would’ve constantly set off the system. Given that he was ninety-nine percent certain he was the only Psy alive who knew the location of the bunker and had visual coordinates for it, he’d decided to focus on the only other possible threat.
The bunker was in SnowDancer territory. That it hadn’t been found for decades didn’t mean the possibility was negligible. The wolves were highly territorial—no pack rose to be as powerful as SnowDancer without aggressively protecting what they owned. He couldn’t discount the idea of a patrol stumbling on the bunker.
He’d wired the bottom of the trapdoor.
The device was tiny and difficult to spot in dim light, and had a battery-powered transmitter. The latter had been a calculated risk, but as it was designed to only send a signal in the event of a breach, the risk was minor. Secrecy no longer mattered if a wolf was already inside the bunker.
As the endless meeting carried on, Renault’s hand curled over the end of his chair arm, the brown of his skin stretched tight over his knuckles.
He was a Gradient 8.7 telekinetic with teleportation capabilities. He’d also based his head office as close to the bunker as possible while remaining under the radar—it meant he was in no danger of burning out his psychic strength even if he had to make back-to-back trips to the bunker within a single day. He’d been confident of his ability to teleport in on the heels of an alert, grab Memory, and teleport out before anyone actually got through the bunker door.
The one thing he hadn’t planned for was that the breach would occur during a critical meeting with already nervous investors who would not forgive any disruption.
The discussion finally ended after night had fallen.
He teleported out the instant he was behind the closed door of his personal office.
Given the delay, he’d considered not responding to the alert. He had no desire to face off against a SnowDancer. The wolves had a well-earned reputation for being vicious—their motto was rumored to be shoot first and ask questions of the corpses. But he had to know. Memory was his most critical asset. He’d never found anyone else who could replicate what she did for him, and he didn’t plan to lose access to her.
He chose the safest lock image he had, one that would give him visibility but obscure his body enough to guarantee he wasn’t a sitting target.
A fraction of a second of disorientation and he stood beside Memory’s wardrobe. No Memory. No cat. He took extreme care as he stepped out into the hallway . . . and found himself staring at a door that had been ripped off its hinges. He snapped his head right, then left, but sensed no movement. He kept his guard up regardless as he walked into the living area—wolves were premier hunters and could stand motionless in wait for prey.
As for Memory, she knew how to be quiet. He’d trained her to be quiet.
The feline, he didn’t worry about. It had to be dead or very close to it by now. One kick and Renault would collapse its rib cage. Memory was lucky he hadn’t done that after her pet had scratched him soon after she’d adopted the mangy thing. Overall, it had been a good decision—the creature came in useful as a leash to control her.
The living area was empty.
It didn’t take long to sweep the rest of the bunker and walk out in the direction of the trapdoor. He used the light from his phone to navigate and saw that the hatch was closed. A chair sat fallen to its side on the ground, the dirt disturbed. If it had been a wolf that had entered, that hatch was probably weighed down or locked.
Not that Renault was stupid enough to crawl out into wolf territory.
Turning on his heel, he did another sweep, but he didn’t find anything new. The door torn off its hinges told the whole story. As a high-Gradient Tk, he could’ve wrenched the door off its hinges, but he didn’t believe another one of his kind had been down here. Logic stated it must’ve been a wolf.
Renault’s mind worked with cold precision. Given her lack of compliance and continued rebelliousness no matter what he did to her, he’d considered that Memory might one day escape and had laid the necessary foundations to recover her. All he had to do was wait, and she’d be returned to him. Except . . .
He’d always worked on the premise that she would escape while outside with him.
A SnowDancer wolf, however, that altered things.
Chapter 8
Empaths are now the most critical Psy in the world. We all fall if the Honeycomb falls.
—Editorial, PsyNet Beacon
ALEXEI WAS CONSCIOUS of the E staying motionless in the lower bunk, could all but feel her wary attention burning through the bottom of his bunk. He’d assigned her the lower berth because her movements, while better than when he’d first found her, remained uncoordinated, and he was afraid
she’d wake disoriented and tumble out of the upper one.
His own reflexes were fast enough that he could be on the floor a heartbeat after hearing or scenting any sign of a threat. But he didn’t say that aloud—not when he could taste the acrid scent of her fear in the air. The idea of being helpless with a predator in the room was crushing even her lion’s heart.
Claws slicing out to dig into the mattress, Alexei focused on ensuring his breathing was deep and even, of a man who had fallen into slumber. The rustle below was a long time coming. He guessed she was curling up onto her side. Her breath fell into the rhythms of sleep not long afterward, her will to stay awake no match for her exhaustion.
Alexei, in contrast, stayed awake for some time, his eyes locked on the ceiling but his mind on that bunker. He didn’t have to be a psychologist to know that Memory was far better socialized than she should be if she’d spent years as a captive. She not only interacted with him, she reacted in appropriate ways—anger included. She’d definitely been ready to stab him with her fork when he’d poked at her about her bird-sized portions. A bit of deliberate provocation on his part to get her to eat—if only to shut him up.
Even a woman of her petite size needed more fuel than she’d been taking in.
So yes, Memory’s reactions had been about what he might’ve expected—in a woman who hadn’t been caged for a long period. On the flip side, the too-small clothes he’d spotted in the wardrobe hadn’t lied. He’d seen no signs of a second captive, so those clothes had been Memory’s at some point in time.
The two facts didn’t mesh.
A woman held captive since childhood shouldn’t be as functional as Memory.
The mystery followed him into sleep, his rest the shallow one of a soldier on watch.
* * *
• • •
A scream pierced his mind. He reacted to the terror in the sound before he was awake enough to think conscious thoughts. Moving with predator speed, he jumped off the bunk to land in a crouch on the floor, his shirtless back to Memory’s bunk and his attention on the door.
That door was open, as he’d left it because Memory didn’t respond well to small, enclosed spaces. Nothing moved beyond . . . but there was an unknown scent in the air. A dark and coldly metallic scent that made his wolf’s fur stand up and its upper lip curl—he knew that scent, had tasted it in the bunker.
It was so potent right now that it was as if Memory’s intruder sat on her bed, but when he glanced back, he found her alone; she lay tightly curled up under the blanket, her eyes scrunched shut and her hands over her ears.
Baring his teeth, Alexei prowled out to hunt down the intruder who’d so badly abused her. But the farther he got from Memory, the more the scent dissipated. Outside the bedroom, he found only quiet. The security system showed no incursions, and he swept the entire area without finding so much as an insect.
He stepped into the bedroom . . . and the ugly scent slapped him in the face.
Memory was sitting on the edge of her bunk now, her head down and her hands still over her ears. She was whispering something under her breath that he couldn’t understand. Not until he was only a foot away from her.
“Get out, get out, get out, get out, get out.”
An endless, repetitive loop steeped in acidic fear underneath the cold and metallic scent that made him want to kill. The only problem was that the scent was coming from Memory.
Crouching down in front of her, he said, “Memory.” When that didn’t seem to penetrate, he reached out to grip her wrists. “Wake up, little lioness.” Her skin was hot, her muscles rigid. He pulled gently but firmly. She resisted.
He growled loud enough to fill the space.
Her head lifted . . . and her eyes, they were obsidian.
The tiny hairs on his nape prickling, Alexei nonetheless didn’t break the physical contact. “Wake up,” he ordered again, dead certain she wasn’t truly conscious of him.
Eyes of obsidian gleamed unseeing at him. He felt an eerie sense of looking into an endless, vast darkness. An abyss without end.
“Memory.” He shook her with care not to hurt, only to awaken.
Cool curls hit his hands, her hair not yet fully dry. Those haunting eyes shimmered with color, an oil slick under the sun, and he suddenly remembered a throwaway comment his fellow lieutenant Judd, a telekinetic, had once made—that empaths were “happy rainbows” who swept everyone along in their wake.
Did Memory’s psychic presence have color? Did this mean she was coming back to reality?
He stroked his thumbs over the inner surface of her wrists, the skin there soft and delicate. “Your eyes are beautiful.” Deep pools of mystery that fascinated his wolf.
He didn’t mention her scent, which was vacillating wildly between the ugly metallic one that made him want to snarl, and the inherent warmth of what he’d picked up from her before this waking. It was almost as if Memory were two people.
“Channel the woman who wanted to stab me with a fork,” he told her. “Fight your way out.”
Her breath hitching, her eyes seeming to focus on Alexei. “He’s hunting me.” A plea and an angry fury at once.
Alexei’s vision changed, his wolf rising to the surface. “PsyNet?” He knew that, at its core, the sprawling psychic network was a lifenet. Psy minds needed a connection to a stable psychic network in order to survive. But the PsyNet also flowed with data and could be used for mental communication—or an attack.
“Yes.” The single word was gritted out through clenched teeth. “Renault.”
“Can you hold him off?” Alexei reached for the phone he’d kept in the pocket of his sweatpants.
Memory grabbed at his wrist. “I need . . .” Harsh breaths. “The contact, it helps.”
To a wolf, touch was life. It made perfect sense to Alexei that, cut off from her own pack, Memory would reach for him. “Put your hand on my shoulder,” he told her. “It’ll give you skin contact while I make a call to get you help.”
Her skin was cold where it met his, her hand icy. “I screamed on the PsyNet when he came at me, and he retreated, but this region doesn’t have many minds. He’s coming back.” Rapid-fire words, jolting breaths. “I’m not strong enough yet.”
“Scream again,” Alexei said. “As many times as it takes. Keep him distracted.” It infuriated him that he couldn’t take out her attacker, but sometimes, a battle was won with clear thinking and strategic use of available options. “Just hold him off for half a minute more.”
Her nails dug into his shoulder, but the small irritation was nothing to his wolf. He still held her other wrist, continued to stroke the pad of his thumb over the soft skin on the inside curve while he made the call. “Aden,” he said when it was answered on the other end. “I need PsyNet help.”
Aden Kai, leader of the deadliest squad of assassins and shadow operatives in the world, and a man who had a seat on the Psy Ruling Coalition, didn’t question why a wolf lieutenant needed psychic assistance enough to use this emergency call code known to a strictly limited number of people. “Details,” the Arrow leader said, echoes of Silence yet in his voice.
Memory began to shiver, the tremors shaking her frame.
Releasing her wrist, Alexei pulled her into his lap so she was against the naked skin of his chest. Her arms went around him, her cheek pressed to his heart. He slid his own hand under her hair, curling it over her nape. “An E is under attack on the PsyNet.” He knew the psychic network was a vast place, a single mind impossible to locate without markers, but in this case, he could give Aden very specific directions. “We’re in den territory, not far from the empathic training ground.”
That training ground had been chosen because this area of the PsyNet was quiet. It gave trainee empaths room to learn control and run their psychic exercises without interference from—or to—other minds. And though the compound was on t
he border between DarkRiver and SnowDancer territory, it was the Arrow Squad that guarded the trainees.
The wolf watching over the lamb.
“I’m receiving multiple alerts from my people at the compound of a disturbance nearby,” Aden said almost before Alexei finished speaking. “Team en route.”
* * *
• • •
MEMORY screamed and screamed on the psychic plane, using her terror and turning it into a disruption that rolled through the PsyNet. Renault might still have the ability to smash through to her mind, but he’d never again bleed her dry—he needed physical contact to make the initial connection for the transfer. Once made, that connection only lasted a finite period, and he’d left her alone in the bunker for far too long.
She’d shaken off the murderous parasite.
That knowledge gave her the strength to keep on fighting, her body encircled by the primal heat of Alexei’s. The physical contact made her stronger—but Renault had all the advantages on the psychic level. He’d shredded her shields a lifetime ago. She had no defenses, a turtle without its shell.
The only reason Renault wasn’t already inside her mind was that she’d had a small and zealously guarded store of psychic energy that she’d released in panicked desperation when she first jerked awake. He’d been so close by then that she’d felt his breath on her neck, a fetid heat. The energy had created a shock wave. A pitifully weak one, but he hadn’t expected it, and it had buffeted his mind a short distance from her own.
“Show me where you are!” he screamed at her on the PsyNet as he came closer and closer. “Give me a visual! You know you can’t win! You belong to me!”
Memory had no more energy left.
But surrender was not an option. Never would it be an option.
She would fight to the death.
Blood cold at the emptiness around her, the overwhelming aloneness that would’ve crushed her but for the wolf who held her, Memory screamed again into the psychic space, disrupting the limited data flows around her. Then, in a final act of defiant resolve, she tore at the golden threads around her, hoping her actions would trigger an automatic alert that would send out a security team.