by Nalini Singh
"Stay with me," he said as her pulse refused to grow stronger.
Zaira had survived a childhood so hellish, she should be insane or broken or a monster. Instead, she was one of the strongest Arrows he knew; she'd protected their most wounded, most broken for over five years. That many long years she'd stayed dead to the world, stayed in a tiny network that he knew must've felt like a prison to a woman who'd grown up in a barren locked room.
And still she'd gone because he'd asked her.
He would not allow her to die now, when, for the first time, she had a chance at a real life. This desolate landscape would not claim her fire. It had no right. "You will stay," he ordered, his lips against her ear. "You promised me." That promise had been made nearly twenty-one years ago, but he'd never forgotten, never would forget.
Even after months of sufficient food and daily outdoor exercise, she'd still been so skinny and small and with such anger inside her. Barely four feet tall back then, at least a foot shorter than him, and yet she'd said, "I won't run anymore. I won't try to leave. I've decided to stay and protect you."
"Why?"
Midnight black eyes afire in a sun-browned face that was all sharp bones. "Because you don't have a monster inside you."
"Keep your promise," he said now. "Don't leave. Stay with me. Stay."
His only answer was a pulse so faint, he could barely feel it.
Chapter 6
STANDING BELOW A star-filled North Dakota sky, Vasic tried and failed for the hundredth time to get to Aden or Zaira. "I can't sense either of them," he told Ivy where his wife stood next to him on the wide verandah both his lost squadmates had helped build.
The light above bathed the area in a gentle glow that didn't penetrate the night darkness beyond. "I've never not been able to sense Aden." The idea that his failure meant his closest friend was dead was a possibility he refused to consider.
Dark circles under the translucent copper of her eyes and lines of tension around her mouth, Ivy took the phone from her ear and thrust it into a pocket. "Sahara says Kaleb's continuing to try, too, but he's getting nowhere."
That was bad. Vasic was a born teleporter and Kaleb Krychek a cardinal telekinetic who could also lock on to people rather than simply places. If the two of them couldn't locate Aden or Zaira, no one could. "I can't even tell if they're together or not." The timing of the abductions suggested the same foe at work, but they couldn't rule out two separate actions or two separate prisons. "The Es connected to Aden and Zaira--they're still sensing nothing?"
Ivy rubbed her face. "Yes. They're saying it doesn't feel like death . . . just as if they're lost."
Vasic had never known Aden to be lost. Even as a child, his best friend had known where he was headed, known what he wanted.
Wrapping her arms around him, warm and soft and loving, Ivy said, "Aden's strong, resourceful, incredibly smart, and Zaira's lethal, with a mind that thinks in ways no one can predict." The bond between them rippled with her passionate belief. "Whatever the situation, I know those two will come out on top."
Vasic held her tight with the single arm he possessed; Samuel Rain's attempts at designing and building him a working prosthetic had continued to fail. Vasic could've halted the entire thing, but after what the brilliant robotics engineer had done to save his life, it was a small enough thing to indulge Samuel's eccentricity and determination to succeed.
"He needs constant challenges," Aden had said a bare week earlier, while he and Vasic were going through a martial arts training routine in the open area to the left of the verandah. "Right now, you're it." A small pause. "Sooner or later, he will succeed or go mad trying, so you'd better decide if you do, in fact, want a prosthetic."
"Since I was eight years old," Vasic said to Ivy, the side of his face pressed to the soft black of her hair, "Aden's always been there." A quiet rock that didn't shift or give way no matter how vicious the deluge. "The idea of not being able to speak to him . . . I can't process it." Vasic had once had a death wish; it wasn't until this instant that he understood what it must've done to Aden to believe he'd have to watch Vasic die.
Ivy leaned back to reach up and stroke his hair off his face, her gaze potent with emotion. "He's your brother." She swallowed past the thickness in her voice. "And he's our family."
She understood; she'd always understood. Never had she begrudged him his friendship with Aden. Never had she failed to include Aden in their new family.
Love isn't finite, she'd told him, it is infinite and it has infinite facets.
"I love him, too," she whispered. "Even though he's a year younger than you, he's like a big brother."
"Yes." Vasic cupped the back of her head. "Aden's always been older than he should be." Always carried too much weight on his shoulders.
"And Zaira." Ivy's hand fisted against his chest. "She plays with Rabbit, you know."
"What?" He'd never seen the commander throw so much as a stick for his and Ivy's pet, had always thought she was too deep in Silence to pay attention to the needs of a small white dog.
Ivy nodded against him, fine strands of her hair catching against his jacket. "I've seen her when she thinks no one is watching. She'll play-fight for his stick with him, and once, I saw her give him a treat she must've bought herself."
Raw hope grew in his heart, dulled only by the dark fact that both Aden and Zaira were missing. "Is she capable of breaking Silence?" He'd never forget the defiant, bruised, and bloodied girl he and Aden had first met, the girl Aden had stayed in touch with even when he and Vasic had been transferred to a training facility on a different continent.
Vasic and Aden had shared so much growing up, but Aden's relationship with Zaira was and had always been, separate. Vasic had never questioned it, seeing it simply as Aden being Aden and keeping an eye on a member of the squad who needed it. That was before Ivy. Being bonded to an empath had given him new eyes; he'd begun to glimpse odd inconsistencies in Aden's interactions with Zaira, things that didn't line up with his behavior when it came to the rest of the squad.
Vasic hadn't said anything but he hoped that his friend would find with Zaira what Vasic had found with Ivy. He wanted that for Aden, wanted him to know what it was to find home in his lover's eyes. Even more, he wanted the laughter for Aden, the joy of figuring out how to navigate this new territory of love and affection and tactile contact that wasn't about pain or training or anything but pleasure. The only problem Vasic had foreseen was Zaira herself--the Venetian commander had never shown any signs of desiring a life beyond Silence.
"Zaira's shields are so strong I never pick up anything," Ivy told him, running a hand up and down his back in a petting gesture she didn't seem to be aware of making but that was deeply familiar to him by now. "I don't know if she feels or even wants to feel, but anyone with the capacity to be kind to a small animal who can offer her no advantage, has a heart." Ivy looked up, a sheen of emotion in her eyes that punched him in the heart. "She has this blunt and deeply honest way of looking at the world. No filters."
"You're friends," he said, the realization a surprise.
Ivy wiped at her eyes. "Not yet, but we're getting there. I really like her even if she keeps telling me I have the survival skills of a newborn puppy," she added with a wet laugh. "She's planning to teach me self-defense moves tailored to my size and weight."
"Did you tell her I'm already giving you lessons?"
A shaky smile. "She said the things you're teaching me are fine if I plan to grow a foot and put on ninety pounds of muscle. Otherwise, I need to move smarter and be more sneaky."
He felt his lips curve slightly. "Yes, that sounds like Zaira." Pressing his forehead to Ivy's when she drew in trembling breath, Vasic cupped her face in his hand. "You said it--they're tough. They'll survive and we'll find them."
"I know." Ivy closed her fingers over his wrist. "I just hope they're not being hurt." Anger and worry and frustration. "It's enough, Vasic. Enough. Why can't the world just leave the Arrows in pe
ace?"
Vasic had no answer for her, but he knew his next move. "I'm going to head to Venice," he said, continuing to hold her face in his hand, her skin so soft under his touch and her love so sweetly fierce that he was astonished all over again that he had the right to hold her, to call her his own. "We still aren't certain where Aden was taken, but Zaira's team has pinpointed the exact location of her abduction."
"I'll come with you." Ivy pressed her palms to his chest, his empath who was so generous with touch, with affection. "I might be able to help some of Zaira's people. Especially Alejandro--he's not functional without her."
*
IVY had been right to worry about Alejandro.
The Arrow, who was only in his twenties, had imprinted on Zaira after his brain reset following an overdose of a drug Ming LeBon had used to turn Arrows into mindless weapons. As a result of Zaira's absence, he was in a violent rage. Corralled in a secure room in the Venetian compound, he was crashing his body repeatedly against the door in an effort to get out.
"Be careful," Vasic told Ivy, well aware she had a full measure of the empathic tendency to give too much, even at the cost of her own safety. "His brain is compromised. He may not react to empathic help in a predictable way."
"He's afraid." Ivy's voice held an echo of pain that wasn't her own. "I can sense it from here--Zaira is his only anchor to sanity and he's terrified he's falling back into the abyss. More than that, he's terrified for her." Her head turned toward the door behind which Alejandro screamed in fury. "Keeping him trapped and unable to assist in the search for her isn't a good idea."
Vasic wanted to free the other male, but he also knew that to be an impossibility. "He's a deadly threat. He'd think nothing of killing tens if not hundreds of people in his hunt to find Zaira." The commander was Alejandro's sole priority but not in a healthy way. "The best we can do is sedate him so he doesn't harm himself." And hope Zaira wasn't lost forever, because if she was, so was Alejandro.
The clarity of Ivy's eyes reflected her awareness of that terrible unspoken truth. "I'll see if I can calm him enough that the process of giving him a sedative doesn't turn into a bloodbath--and doesn't cause him even more psychic pain."
Waiting in the predawn darkness that cloaked this part of the world, he watched until he saw her reach the closed door guarded by two sentries who came toward her, no doubt with a report about Alejandro. Only then did he follow Zaira's lieutenant, Mica, out of the compound that had functioned as a secret bolt-hole under Silence. It was here that many of their "dead" had come, the ones deemed useless by Ming and targeted for execution.
Aden, Vasic, Zaira, and the others at the heart of the rebellion hadn't been able to save all their brethren and each loss lingered an open wound on their souls, but they'd saved enough that the squad was now the strongest it had ever been. Many of Ming's useless Arrows had decades' worth of experience to pass on to those coming through the ranks. Even Alejandro had something to contribute--quite aside from being a fully trained Arrow who could provide backup as long as Zaira gave him the order, he was a genius with delicate explosives.
Ming hadn't seen any of that. All he'd seen were men and women who were "imperfect," and thus not worth the time or the effort to ensure they could remain a part of the squad. That made him a fool.
"What was Zaira doing outside the compound?" he asked Mica.
"I think she just needed downtime." The dark-haired and stocky male, whose jaw was currently heavily shadowed by stubble, glanced around to ensure they couldn't be overheard. "Some of the older Arrows occasionally do their best to make her brain explode."
"I've always told Aden I'm surprised they're all still alive." Zaira was not known for her patience.
Mica's expressionless facade didn't crack. But when he spoke, Vasic understood why he was Zaira's lieutenant. "I've offered to disappear them where no one would ever find the bodies, but Zaira says they'll come back from the dead, they're so stubborn about doing things a certain way."
It would, Vasic thought, take time for the old guard to adapt to this new world. "Did she often take the same route on her walks?"
Mica shook his head. "She was scrupulous about never following a pattern . . . but she did go for a walk away from the compound at some point every two or three days."
So someone had to have been watching her, waiting for her to get far enough away that the chances of backup reaching her in time were low.
"We're here, sir."
Though the canal water sat dark and placid beside them, the evidence of violence was easy to spot not far from where two older Arrows stood watch and kept away the robe-and-slipper-clad spectators who'd spilled out of the nearby homes. Splatters of blood marked the cobblestones, distinctive even under the dull yellow of the light seeping through the old glass of the ornate streetlamp.
Krychek appeared beside Vasic right then. Dressed in black combat pants and a black T-shirt, the cardinal telekinetic appeared more akin to the Arrows than to the political sharks with whom he swam daily. "This is the location?" His eyes, cold white stars on black, scanned the scene.
Vasic gave a short nod before looking toward Mica. "The bodies?" There was too much blood for one person; he'd have known Zaira had taken down at least one of her attackers even without the telepathic briefing he'd received when Mica's team first arrived at the scene.
"We have three in a cold storage room at the compound." The lieutenant stood at parade rest, his eyes watchful of the civilians who lingered beyond the perimeter. "Someone used a high-powered laser to burn off the dead men's faces and their fingerprints show signs of having been burned off months ago."
"Crude but effective." Kaleb looked at Vasic from the other side of the splatters of blood, having walked slowly around, his eyes cataloguing the evidence as he moved. "Obliterating the faces wouldn't have taken longer than a minute at most. DNA?"
Mica answered only after glancing at Vasic and receiving a nod. Vasic wasn't officially Aden's second in command, had never believed he was stable enough for the position, but his squadmates had always treated him as if he was--and now, the mantle was beginning to fit.
"No DNA hits."
It was possible to wipe someone that deeply from the official record, but it took considerable power and access. "Psy?" he asked the lieutenant as Kaleb crouched down beside the bloodstains as if attempting to analyze the pattern.
The answer was a surprise. "One Psy, two humans."
Krychek's head came up at Mica's response, the flawless physical lines of his face betraying nothing, despite the fact that he was the man who'd taken down Silence. Many people believed it was a twisted double bluff, that Krychek was holding on to his own emotionless conditioning while nudging others out of it. Those who believed the latter thought he planned to take advantage of the confusion engendered by the breakdown of a way of life that had lasted more than a hundred years.
Those people seemed to have conveniently forgotten the psychic bond that tied Krychek to Sahara Kyriakus. The man wasn't Silent--he was just very, very, very good at showing only what he wished.
"Psy and human?" he said to Mica, his dark hair gleaming blue-black under the streetlight.
"Yes. We double-checked the genetic screen."
That was highly unusual. Psy and humans could work together, and the Human Alliance had recently assisted in helping those of Vasic's race control the infection that had turned so many Psy blindly murderous, but it was a fragile relationship at best. Humans had no trust in the Psy, given how often unethical Psy had used their abilities to manipulate and rape human minds. For members of the two races to work together to abduct an Arrow was so beyond the realm of what was known as to be nearly incomprehensible.
"Did the humans show signs of mind control?" Long-term control could leave physical lesions on the brain.
Mica shook his head. "It was the first thing the pathologist looked for."
Vasic wasn't surprised--it made no sense to use enslaved humans against a high-value
target. The puppet master couldn't know when his slaves might collapse from the strain of fighting against psychic coercion. "Any other useful data?"
Mica's eyes met Vasic's. Sir, should I answer aloud?
Vasic knew Mica wasn't worried about the bystanders--they were too far away to catch anything. Did you find any signs Krychek may be involved?
No, though investigations are ongoing.
Answer aloud for now and run any sensitive data past me. The fact was, Kaleb had tentacles in every corner of the Net--he was an asset they couldn't afford not to utilize. And so far in their alliance, the cardinal had kept his word.
"Zaira managed to telepath certain details before she was incapacitated," the lieutenant said. "Five trained operatives working as a unit, in silence."
That eliminated any possibility of mind control. Zaira was very experienced. If she'd described the five as a unit, they had to have been consciously cooperating. Mind control was never that smooth, especially in high-pressure situations.
Krychek rose to his feet. His telepathic voice was as cold and obsidian as his eyes when he said, There's been nothing, not even a faint rumor, of any such Psy-human cooperation.
It appears we have an intelligent and careful enemy. One smart enough to plug all leaks and skilled enough to abduct the leader of the Arrow Squad and one of his most experienced commanders. Before today, Vasic would've said that was impossible.
Chapter 7
ZAIRA WOKE WITH a throbbing head and a mouth filled with cotton wool, the pillow under her head hard yet tensile. Scanning out with her mind, she gasped, the shattering pain sparking fireworks in front of her eyes.
"Zaira." A familiar masculine voice in the pitch-dark inside what had to be a hide, Aden's hand brushing away her hood to expose her face, his blunt-tipped fingers on her pulse. "How is your head?"