by Nalini Singh
A quick shake of his head before he led her to an all-wheel-drive vehicle parked on the DarkRiver side of the compound. “Kidnapping took place in San Francisco. Cats had people in the area and they’ve gone in first.”
“Whatever helps to save her.” Memory was more than willing to sacrifice her need for vengeance if it’d keep a child from being imprisoned.
Alexei got them through DarkRiver territory relatively fast, but even with the high speeds permitted on the public roads, the trip to San Francisco wasn’t a quick one. “Have the Arrows had any luck locating Renault on the PsyNet?” Memory asked in an effort to find some way to help the stolen E.
“Not so far.” Alexei’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Aden’s people are nothing if not relentless—they will eventually track him down, but it’ll take time.”
Time was the one thing the kidnapped empath didn’t have. Not only her, but all the women who would die to feed Renault’s twisted psyche; he’d murdered before Memory and she had zero doubts he’d continue to murder now that she’d escaped. “I know him,” she said, turning years of forced proximity into a weapon. “It’s possible that once I see the location of the kidnapping, I can work out where he might’ve gone.”
It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.
“I have his scent.” Alexei’s voice was without growl, pure focused predator. “If we can determine where he ended his teleport, I can track him.”
When they got to the location of the kidnapping—a small townhouse in the Nob Hill area—it was to be greeted by a leopard changeling who confirmed Renault had teleported in and out. The DarkRiver changeling’s jaw was scruffy, his eyes nightglow. “I picked up an unknown scent in only one area of the home—by the little girl’s desk. It’s in front of a window. Caught the same scent outside the window.”
Memory gritted her teeth. “He saw her, teleported in.” All Renault needed was a clear enough visual of his intended location. “He had to have stalked her beforehand, knew she was an E.”
Alexei’s gaze scanned the area, a steely hardness to him she’d never before seen. “Parents?”
“Single dad. Hard to read, but he recently transferred his daughter to a school that has an E on staff and runs an E training course alongside telepathy and all the rest.”
Memory’s heart hurt for a father who so obviously cared. “I want to go in, see if I can pick up anything.” Maybe Renault had made a mistake others had missed; it was likely a fruitless hope, but she had to try.
Alexei and the leopard came with her, the two having a low-voiced discussion about the circumference of Renault’s teleporting ability and how they could utilize their resources to box him in.
All Memory could think about was a scared eight-year-old girl. That girl’s father sat on the sofa in the living area with his head in his hands. The pale-skinned man who couldn’t have been more than thirty-five looked up when she entered. His eyes hitched on her hair. She knew without asking that his daughter had curls and brown skin.
Walking over to the delicate white desk by the window when he said nothing, Memory went to look out the window . . . and a wave of frigid cold swept over her. Not winter cold. This was the endless cold of psychopathic nothingness. It crept into her bones, chilled her from the inside out . . . and tugged her to the left.
Not knowing what was happening, she searched frantically for a door on her left, but there was only a wall. She ran outside in silence, conscious of Alexei and the leopard following. She’d been scared she’d lose the connection, but it held.
“I can feel him,” she whispered, her chest heaving. “Like we’re connected by an invisible thread.” She saw no evidence of a bond when she glanced into the Net. Renault had probably hidden it. Or maybe . . . “I don’t think this is supposed to exist.” She tried to breathe, think, hold on to that thread. “He can’t know about it or he’d have cut it.”
Her mind raced. “I was under his control.” Inside his shields, suffocated and isolated. “He never worried if, while he was creating pathways into my mind, he was also accidentally creating a path in the other direction.” Was it possible Memory could walk into his mind as he’d done hers?
Revulsion crawled over her, but she tried.
Nothing. No sense of Renault, but the tug to the left stayed steady.
“Can he track you in return?” Alexei’s eyes glowed wild amber.
“Even if he can, he needs physical contact to take control, and I have shields now.” Amara was far stronger than Renault and, as of this week, Memory could rebuff her attempts at an unwilling transfer. “If I can hold off a 9.9, I should have no problems with an 8.7.” Renault might be a serial murderer, but that didn’t matter, not in this.
Memory also had no fear the past would paralyze her. If she’d fought back in the bunker, she sure as hell wasn’t going to stop now that she’d tasted freedom, fought with a golden wolf, and made friends who liked being with her.
Alexei closed his big, rough-skinned hand over hers. “I’ll tear out the bastard’s throat if he tries to lay a finger on you.” A growling promise that reminded her she was no longer alone in the dark. “Emmett, you’ll keep watch here?”
Memory barely heard the short interaction. Anchored by Alexei’s primal warmth, her brain crystal clear, she pointed down the street. “He’s somewhere in that direction.”
“Jeep or on foot?”
Memory squeezed her eyes shut, attempting to gauge the distance between her and the man she hunted without success. She fell back on her instincts. “On foot. I may lose the trail in a car.” With that, she began to run, her sneakered feet hitting the asphalt in a rapid rhythm. Beside her ran a wolf in human form whose wildness was a protective shield around her as the people on the street scrambled out of their way.
She flinched, thinking she must’ve begun to stink of Renault, but quickly realized the pedestrians’ startled faces betrayed no disgust, nothing but wide-eyed curiosity. It was Alexei. Of course it was Alexei. A predatory changeling on the hunt was no unknown to these people, even if they had to be more familiar with the cats. It was clear they recognized Alexei’s changeling nature despite the fact he hadn’t shifted form.
Pain stabbed her side, but Memory blanked out the stitch and ran on. She’d asked Yuri to suggest extra exercises she could use to increase her physical fitness, her development too slow under the lightweight plan worked out by the physiotherapist who’d seen her a few days into her stay at the compound.
Agreeing with Memory that she was strong enough to bear more, Yuri had created an entire exercise plan just for her. Her heart hurt at the thought of her friend, but she focused on the gift he’d given her—she was far stronger than when she’d first left the bunker.
A low deep beat began to vibrate up her body with each footfall. Her heart, pounding so hard that it felt like thunder. No. There were sounds to go along with the beat. A drum. And people. So many people that it was a gentle roar.
Alexei bit out a curse. “I forgot—Chinese New Year celebrations got postponed to this week because of the weather, and we’re heading right into Chinatown.”
Memory didn’t stop. “We can’t go any other way. He’s close.” The signal had grown in strength. Yes, that was the better analogy—not a thread tying them together, but a signal for which she had the frequency.
Never while imprisoned could she have imagined that she would one day run headlong into a smiling mass of people while glowing lanterns swayed overhead and in the street wove a dragon created by many performers weaving and swaying the creature’s colorful body.
Enticing smells filled the air. Color burst to life around every corner. Images of rabbits abounded on the lanterns, on key chains hanging from a stall doing a brisk business, and even on the walls of the buildings. Many were projected with light, others stenciled in bright colors.
At any other time, Memory w
ould’ve stood in place and gotten drunk on the mass of sensation, but today she wanted the entire crowd to disappear, her mind repeating the name, Vashti, over and over again as her lungs pumped frantically.
The revelers got out of the way as soon as they spotted Alexei, but there were just too many people on the streets for them to move fast, and Memory’s body kept being jostled by accident.
Growling after another bump, Alexei took the lead, his hand clamped around hers. “Squeeze my hand when we need to change direction.” He began to push his way through the crowd, while keeping Memory protected behind the hard muscle of his body.
Suddenly they were moving. Paper parasols danced over her head as the attendees lifted them high to allow her and Alexei to pass. At one point, the two of them wove between what appeared to be a dance troupe, the team dressed in khaki pants and blousy shirts tied at the waist by thick swathes of colorful fabric.
The dancers also had gold in their hair, the foil applied in the pattern of a rabbit.
A male dancer jumped out of the way when he saw Alexei and bumped into a muscular woman who yelled at him in a language Memory didn’t recognize. The festival goers were of every color and size and shape.
She made out her own people—almost always in the far back of the crowd, but very much present in this chaotic environment that had nothing to do with Silence. A number of changelings and humans went to call hello to Alexei, but most swallowed their cries half-spoken the instant they caught the urgent look on his face.
Others shouted offers of assistance, but Alexei shook his head. The two of them were going too fast, their task too urgent to stop and explain things. But Memory worried. Renault had always worked alone, but he was a telekinetic. If he still had a reserve of energy, he could throw Alexei a great distance.
As if he’d heard her thoughts, Alexei halted when one particular changeling called out, “Lexie! You need help?”
“Yeah!” Alexei called back.
The big, dark-skinned man was with a pretty woman who had old eyes and tawny-gold hair streaked with chocolate brown, a little girl who wore a bow in her hair, and a tall teenaged boy whose slouch had turned into watchful readiness in a matter of heartbeats.
Before Alexei’s friend left his family, she saw him speak quickly to both the boy and a couple of other changelings around them, who had the hard-edged look she’d begun to recognize in changeling soldiers. The tawny-haired woman said something to him right afterward. He touched his fingers to her cheek and smiled at his little girl before cutting through the crowd to join Memory and Alexei.
He moved like a cat, his eyes a feline dark green.
The entire thing had taken less than ten seconds, but the delay panicked Memory. More so when Alexei took another couple of seconds to tell the leopard changeling that they were on the trail of a murderous telekinetic. Memory bit down on her lower lip—the interruption was worth it; Renault would find it much harder to control two changelings and Memory at the same time.
The DarkRiver male fell in behind Memory.
Her face was hot, her body starting to burn up in the midst of the crowd. She wanted to pull off the jacket, but there was no opportunity, no time. Vashti. Vashti. Vashti. She was the only thing that mattered, her life at the mercy of a serial killer.
Suddenly, the coldness inside her burned, the nothingness searing her to the bone. Her hand clenched on Alexei’s. When he glanced at her, strands of his hair falling across his forehead, she pointed silently to the left—toward a small area devoid of people. It wasn’t a street, but a set of steps that led down into darkness.
Chapter 34
Our working hypothesis on this point is that the increase in violence among the Psy is not a result of the fall of Silence, nor is it actually an increase—we are now simply seeing the violence that was previously hidden by those in power. At present, we do not have enough data to either verify or refute the hypothesis.
—Report to Ruling Coalition from Research Group Gamma-X, Silence & Outcomes
STOPPING AT THE top of the steps, Alexei put his lips to her ear. “Down in the basement?”
“Yes. He’s there.” A shiver threatened to wrack her frame, but Memory gritted her teeth and stood firm. She was no victim, wasn’t Renault’s prisoner. She was an E and she had the heart of a lioness.
Alexei looked to his friend. “Clay, I’ll go first—you come right on my tail, take the bastard down if he’s managed to use his Tk against me.” Amber eyes locked with Memory’s. “Chances Vashti is there?”
“High.” Dissimilar to a true teleporter like Vasic Zen, a teleport-capable telekinetic had only a limited store of energy for jumps. Renault wouldn’t waste his when he’d only taken Vashti to get at Memory.
“Your job is to go straight for the girl, get her out while we occupy him.”
Memory nodded and the two men moved ahead of her. The locked door at the bottom wasn’t powerful enough to withstand changeling strength. Alexei went in low, rolling up to his feet in a flash of speed the instant he was beyond the doorway, with Clay a split second behind him.
The nothingness pulsed and a mind reached out to grab her own. She shoved it off with violent strength . . . and the clawing nothing was gone. “He’s teleported!” Memory called out as she ran into the dark space, scanning it wildly.
Terror, pain, panic.
She pounded toward the far corner, going to her knees in front of what proved to be a crumpled body. One of the men turned on a penlight, illuminating the tangled curls of the tiny girl who lay shivering on the floor, holding her hand over her stomach.
The girl whimpered and drew away before her dark gaze flew behind Memory. “Clay.” Hope, relief, pain smashed into Memory’s senses. “The bad man cut me.”
“I’ve got you now, kitten.” Clay ran one big hand over the girl’s hair before hauling off his T-shirt and folding it up into a makeshift pad. “Call Aden, see if we can get Vasic here. Paramedics won’t be able to get through—”
“No teleporters,” Memory said, her head screaming with Vashti’s fear. “She’s so afraid.”
“Shh.” Clay pressed a kiss to the trembling girl’s cheek. “No teleporters then.” He nodded at Alexei. “This is my friend, Alexei. He’s a wolf, but I like him anyway. He’s going to do first aid on you while I go get a healer I know is on this street somewhere. Okay?”
Vashti swallowed hard but nodded.
Memory saw Clay pull his phone out of his pocket as he ran up the steps. She wanted badly to comfort the small, hurt E, but that whimper at the start had held pure terror—the second-long burst of contact with Renault must’ve altered Memory’s psychic scent. Forcing herself to back off, she went to watch the door while Alexei touched the child with conscious gentleness as he attempted to stop the flow of blood from her stomach wound.
“I have you, sweetheart,” he murmured, no growl in his voice. “I have to put pressure on the wound. It’ll hurt, but it’s important. Ready?”
Memory didn’t hear the girl’s quiet response, but Alexei spoke again not long afterward. “So how’d you meet Clay? Wild party? Catnip-rolling contest?”
A small giggle. “DarkRiver had a . . . picnic.” Words that were a touch breathless. “My dad took me . . . I played . . . with . . . Noor.” Sucked-in air that had Memory urging Clay to hurry. “She’s younger . . . but smart. She . . . gave me her . . . hair bow.”
“Next time we meet, you wear it so I can see,” Alexei said. “Stay with me, Vashti. Open those pretty eyes. There you go.” His voice was calm, steady. “I bet the cats tell all kinds of stories about wolves, don’t they? I’m gonna let you in on a secret—they’re just sore because we’re better-looking. I mean those cats are covered in black spots, while we’re sleek and handsome. Clear winners of the wild beauty contest.”
As the little girl giggled again, the sound scarily weak, Memory opened out her senses in
an effort not to miss Renault should he decide to chance a return. She didn’t want him anywhere near the little girl he’d hurt for no reason but that he could—he was a teleporter, hadn’t needed the distraction to get away.
A thousand emotions slammed into her the instant she lowered her first shield, the festival area bursting with minds upon minds. Gritting her teeth, she narrowed the aperture in her shield until it was on the edge of pain but bearable.
“Alexei,” she asked. “Do you have a knife?” Unlike Vasic, Nerida, and Abbot, Renault couldn’t teleport another person without physical contact, and at this point in the day’s events, he wouldn’t have enough Tk energy left to hold her in place and teleport out with her.
Jabbing at him with a knife would work to keep him at bay.
“Here.” A metallic rasp against stone as Alexei slid across what proved to be a hunting blade. She gripped it, held watch, while Alexei fought to keep Vashti from slipping into unconsciousness.
Memory feared no one would get here in time, not with the crowd, and second-guessed her decision to veto a teleporter. But Vashti had been so afraid. Panic could cause her mind to short out, her heart to stop. But if there was no choice—
Feet pounded down the stairs.
The woman who entered with Clay was statuesque, with rich brown hair to her waist and a body that was all dangerous curves and power. She was dressed in dark blue jeans that hugged her legs, black ankle boots, and a fuzzy red sweater with gold threads woven into it. On her head was a band that glowed with blue liquid and had wobbling eyes on top of it.
And inside her flowed the same deep well of wild compassion that Memory had felt from Lucy.
The healer ran directly toward Vashti, Clay following with a satchel in hand. “Tammy’s emergency kit,” the leopard said to Alexei, his chest heaving. “I directed her here while I ran to her car to grab the kit. You know healers—everyone in the pack is coded into her car’s security.”
“That’s because if anyone dares take my car for a joyride, they’ll be in big doo-doo with every single other member of the pack.” The brunette smiled at Vashti as she got to work, her hands gentle and competent, and her voice soothing and warm.