Shards of Hope (9781101605219)

by Singh, Nalini

  Zaira stared at Beatrice’s face, trying to remember. In the end, all she got was a vague recollection of a trainee who’d been wholly unmemorable. Beatrice had made no mistakes, needed no correction, but she’d also not been the best of the best. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” Zaira would be taking the session again.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Walking into the building, she told Nerida her needs and the other woman said she’d organize the extra personnel. “Do you want Arrows who’ve worked or lived in Venice previously?”

  “If you can spare them, yes,” Zaira said, aware that her city had unique pitfalls newcomers might not understand.

  Nerida scanned current placements and operations assignments on her organizer. “I may have to throw in one or two who haven’t had experience there.”

  “That should be fine. I’ll partner each newcomer with someone familiar with Venice.” Leaving Nerida, she went to head out to catch her teleport back to Venice, hesitated.

  After a moment’s thought, she turned and made her way to the room where she knew Walker and Cris were going over personnel files and holding interviews so they could match up children with compatible adult Arrows. Flexibility was to be built in, in case of serious clashes, but the squad had to start somewhere.

  Cris looked up as soon as Zaira entered, tawny brown eyes pinning her in place as the experienced Arrow had so often done when Zaira was one of her trainees. “Zaira—I thought you were dealing with the situation in Venice.”

  “I am.” Zaira hesitated again because this wasn’t her area of expertise . . . but something about Beatrice had triggered an echo in her. “Are you assigning the older teenagers and those in their early twenties to family groups?”

  Cris gave her a considering look at what had to be an unexpected question coming from her. “Our focus is on the children,” she said. “However, we are placing teenagers up to age sixteen. Anyone older will in all probability prefer independent accommodations.”

  “That doesn’t mean they don’t need families.” Zaira had always had Aden. It had been enough to keep her sane, remind her she had value beyond being a cog in the Arrow machine.

  Zaira’s instincts said Beatrice might have no one who reminded her of the same.

  Leaning back, Walker Lauren frowned. “You’re right. Children return to a healthy family unit throughout their lives.” He ran a hand through his hair before nodding. “We need to make sure every Arrow has a home to return to, regardless of age.”

  Zaira should’ve left then, her point made, but she couldn’t forget Beatrice’s voice—so flat and with an edge of defeat, as if she was used to not being remembered. Zaira knew what it was like to feel so alone, to feel that no one in the world knew of her existence. Sometimes, while she’d been trapped in the cell created by her parents, she’d screamed and screamed just to see if anyone would come.

  No one ever had.

  “Assign Beatrice Gault to me,” she said.

  Walker looked at her, careful and with the same intense quietness to him that was such an indelible part of Aden. “All right,” he said at last, as if she’d passed some silent test. “The smallest children take priority, so it may take up to seventy-two hours for the assignment to be made. We’ll have to speak to her first.”

  “Understood.” Leaving the room, she reached for Aden’s mind.

  Her breath caught.

  He’d left their private telepathic pathway open as if in invitation and as she slipped in, it felt like coming home. The rage wanted to curl around him like a wild pet, affectionate and sure of its welcome. Never had he rejected her. Never. Her emotions for him a primal pulse within her, she said, It wasn’t your fault.

  He’d accepted blame for her nightmares, but she was the one who carried darkness in her blood, not Aden. Somehow, he’d survived his childhood and come through Arrow training with his spirit intact. Not only intact but strong enough, generous enough, to embrace each and every broken soul in his care. Thank you for holding me.

  Come find me so I can do it again.

  She’d realized this morning that there was no going back. The idea of sleeping without him, of not having his mind open to her own, it hurt more than anything had ever before hurt in her life. If there was a chance she hadn’t inherited the madness, that she could control her rages, then Zaira wasn’t going to be a coward.

  She would do this. After all, she belonged to him, always had. There was only one thing she needed before she could surrender to her craving to possess the extraordinary man who saw the shadows of her and found them beautiful. Don’t let me become a monster, Aden, she said. If I go mad, promise me you’ll give the execution order. She wouldn’t ask him to do the actual execution himself; he cared about her, would be destroyed by it. Don’t let me become my parents’ shadow mirror.

  You won’t, Aden said as his face came into view, the two of them having been walking toward each other from opposite ends of the valley compound.

  His faith in her made her soar, but she was too pragmatic, too aware of what lay beneath the thin shell of control. I need the promise.

  No. A hard jaw, an unwavering expression.

  Zaira had a raw moment of insight, of understanding. Giving the order would break him, too. Aden was incapable of harming her—and that knowledge, it made her heart ache. She’d thought the organ too stunted to feel with such passionate agony. But it did.

  Because this beautiful, powerful, incredible man saw her as precious.

  As if she was his shiny, sparkling treasure. One he’d permit no one to take from him . . . not even her. “You are a stubborn man,” she said, her voice husky.

  “Only about things that matter.”

  He kept giving her more gifts, kept making her heart struggle to beat and giving strength to the tiny flame of hope inside her, the one that whispered she wasn’t insane, just a little broken. That was okay. Vasic was a little broken and Ivy loved him. Aden had broken pieces inside and they fit into the astonishing tapestry of him.

  Most of all, her lover wasn’t scared of imperfection. “I’ll wait for you in Venice,” she said, brushing her fingers over his as another Arrow called out to him and her teleport spotted her. “Don’t be late.”

  “I won’t.”

  They separated but the telepathic pathway between them, it remained open until the teleport took her far out of range.

  Chapter 45

  BLAKE COULD FEEL his need building again.

  He was having to go slowly with the human female. Beatrice had questioned him as to why the interrogation center was an abandoned warehouse and not an Arrow facility, and he’d had to pull rank to shut her down. She’d obeyed, of course, but he couldn’t risk pushing her too far too soon. Beatrice was a long-term plan, one that required patience. If he could corrupt her, he’d have someone with whom to share his finest moments.

  With that end result in mind, he’d allowed her to take the lead in the interrogation.

  His prey wasn’t a scientist’s daughter and knew nothing of any codes; it was amusing to watch Beatrice attempt to get the data out of her, but so far, his apprentice hadn’t done any real damage. That would change in two days, when he took over after her “failure.” Blood would flow, sweet and wet, as his victim screamed, but right now, he had to satiate his urges elsewhere.

  Having made sure his schedule was open for at least three hours today, he scanned the semilit pathway between two streets filled with restaurants. Humans and changelings were so often stupid; they believed that walking in pairs would save them. He’d never taken two bef—

  His eyes locked in on a couple heading toward him.

  Not human.

  Not changeling.

  Psy.

  He could tell because they looked nervous to be holding hands, as if not yet sure of the fall of Silence. As he watched, the man floated a rose to the woman using what
must be very minor Tk if he’d been allowed to remain a civilian. The woman clasped the flower to her chest.

  Blake wanted to crush them for their stupidity, but he’d never previously taken Psy victims on his own. His prior Psy targets had been Ming-sanctioned. As such, Ming had created a solid shield around those minds so that their death agonies wouldn’t alert the Net and draw unwelcome attention.

  If he took these two, it would be without the benefit of that shield. Either one could shout out a telepathic scream, so he’d have to do it fast, as with that boy on the beach. An interesting challenge, he thought, his decision made. He waited until they moved just past his hiding place in a shallow recess in the wall, was a heartbeat away from striking when a mind knocked on his on the PsyNet.

  Nerida.

  Throttling his urges, because ignoring the Arrow in charge of security assignments wasn’t an option if he wanted to remain undiscovered, he stayed where he was and the stupid Psy couple with their sickeningly weak bodies walked past and into the night.

  Forty-eight hours, he promised himself as he stepped out onto the psychic plane to speak to Nerida. Forty-eight hours and not only would he be able to assuage his need, he’d own Beatrice in the doing. Because it wasn’t Blake who’d take the victim’s life. No, he’d save that pleasure for Beatrice.

  Once she did that, she’d be his.

  Chapter 46

  ELEVEN HOURS AFTER his phone call with Aden, Judd was at the San Francisco waterfront with Hawke and Riaz. Lucas and his senior sentinel, Nathan, met them at the Embarcadero warehouse both packs used for meetings with BlackSea.

  It was SnowDancer that had taken point during the initial negotiations with BlackSea, since the water-based changelings had reached out directly to the wolves. The DarkRiver leopards, their closest allies, had agreed to remain in the background, though the lines of communication between the two packs had stayed open throughout. Prior to the final alliance, however, all three alphas had met face-to-face, because SnowDancer would not ally with anyone who did not also ally and deal with DarkRiver and vice versa.

  The two packs had a blood bond that went deeper than any relationship they had with another pack. While neither alpha would admit it, Judd had the sense that the packs were becoming one while remaining distinct and separate. They were two branches of a powerful family, a truth that would be sealed the day Mercy gave birth.

  “No seacraft spotted,” Lucas told them as they stepped out of the back of the warehouse and onto the private pier protected from prying eyes by high fences on either side. “We did sense a disturbance in the water a few minutes out. They’re on their way.”

  Hawke folded his arms, pale blue eyes narrowed. “Since when can you sense disturbances in the water, cat?”

  “Since we placed sensors in a deep perimeter into the bay, wolf.” Lucas’s own eyes glinted panther green in the quickly falling darkness. “Seemed smart if we’re going to have water changelings coming in and out on a regular basis. Wouldn’t want to miss an invading force.”

  “So little trust.”

  “Exactly the same amount as you.”

  Both alphas grinned. Because an alliance was one thing. True trust took years to form. And a blood bond such as that between SnowDancer and DarkRiver was so rare that most other changeling packs couldn’t believe it was real. Especially given that both were predatory packs.

  Respect, Judd thought, was the bedrock of that relationship.

  The water stirred in front of them at that moment, a woman in a sleek black wetsuit rising out of it, her eyes a translucent hazel uptilted a tiny bit at the corners and her black hair slicked to her skull. Two others rose with her, men Judd tagged as Malachai and Griffin from his premeeting briefing by Riaz.

  Malachai dwarfed Miane’s five-foot-five or five-foot-six height, his shoulders broad and his body muscular. Griffin, by contrast, wasn’t much taller than Miane, but he moved the same way Judd had seen the most dangerous DarkRiver cats move. Light on his feet, his muscles fluid.

  The two males were wearing only wetsuit pants, their chests bare, while Miane Levèque’s suit appeared to have no zippers or other fastenings that Judd could see now that she’d hauled herself out of the water and onto the pier.

  No one had moved forward to offer help. In time, the BlackSea alpha might accept Lucas’s or Hawke’s assistance in such a situation, but that would take a friendship that hadn’t yet formed. Until then, like any alpha, Miane Levèque would not appreciate any such courtesy—would, in fact, see it as an insult.

  “Welcome to DarkRiver territory,” Lucas said, as Miane made eye contact with him and Hawke in turn. Her eyes were no longer a human hazel, but an intense, endless black that echoed the deepest part of the ocean. So pure was the onyx of her irises that it made it appear as if she had no pupils.

  Stefan had once described the silken darkness of the depths to Judd. Living on Alaris gave the other Tk a unique perspective on the world. Judd wondered if Miane Levèque swam that deep, looked in through the portholes of the deep-sea station financed in large part by BlackSea.

  “Thank you for the welcome.” Miane inclined her head in a regal move. “We tried not to damage any of your sensors.”

  Lucas’s lips kicked up at what was very much an alpha comment, challenge and amusement entwined. “I appreciate it.” A nod back toward the warehouse. “Would you like to come inside? My packmates can bring in towels.”

  “We do not mind being wet.” Miane’s expression remained cool. “My people and I have investigated the members of BlackSea involved in the attempt against the Psy squad you term allies.”

  The Arrows weren’t yet full allies, but Judd appreciated that neither Hawke nor Lucas had made that distinction when asking for information. He knew it had to do with family: the Laurens were packmates, the Arrows their family, and thus by extension, due some measure of loyalty so long as they didn’t act against either pack.

  “And?” The silver-gold of Hawke’s hair caught the fading light, the strands afire. “Find anything useful?”

  Miane Levèque nodded at Malachai. The large male, who was standing with his hands clasped in front of him, spoke without moving an inch out of position. “Jim fell away from BlackSea eight months ago. Though he remains a technical member, paying a percentage of his income into the pack fund so that he can access BlackSea’s resources, he hasn’t attended any Gatherings in that time frame and, as far as I can ascertain, has broken contact with all his compatriots but three.

  “Those three,” the sea changeling continued, “are scattered over remote parts of the world, so his connection with them is distant. None have heard from him in the past two months.”

  Lucas slid his hands into the pockets of the black pants he wore with a dark green shirt open at the collar. “He’s turned loner?”

  Miane Levèque was the one who answered. “Many sea-based changelings are loners by nature, or tight with only a small family unit. Prior to eight months ago, Jim was part of a pod of ten.”

  “His pod doesn’t know why he went his own way,” Malachai said, following on so flawlessly from Miane that Judd wondered at their relationship. It wouldn’t be the first alpha-lieutenant pair he’d heard of since becoming part of SnowDancer.

  “Olivia’s story is nearly identical,” Miane said in that cool voice that was almost Psy but for the icy anger Judd could sense in her words. “She fell away from her peer group around the same time and made it clear she wanted no contact.”

  “She even ignored her siblings’ messages and attempts to find her.” Malachai paused, and only when Miane nodded slightly did he add, “She had a mate, and a child who would now be two. The mate’s body was found six months ago—it was almost all bone and we know his identity only because of DNA. The child remains missing. Her name is Persephone.”

  The BlackSea lieutenant’s words made Judd’s gut tighten. He saw the same concern an
d anger on the faces around him. If sea changelings mated like the wolves or the leopards, then it was for life. The death of a mate could shatter the one who remained and, in this case, perhaps lead her to make dangerous and unstable decisions.

  Malachai’s next words, however, seemed to point to a far more sinister truth.

  “You were right to assume these events are connected to the disappearances that led us to seek an alliance with you,” the BlackSea lieutenant said into the tense quiet. “Jim and Olivia were two of those who vanished—we didn’t know their location until you sent us the data.”

  Judd had been briefed by Riaz on why the sea changelings had decided to change their isolationist policy. Part of it had to do with the changing political climate, but the most important driver was that a number of their pack—such as it was—had vanished without a trace. Because of BlackSea’s unusual structure, it had taken time for Miane to realize what was happening. BlackSea wasn’t anywhere near the biggest pack in the world, but it was the only one that had members worldwide; those members were scattered across great bodies of water, including lakes and the largest rivers in the world.

  Also affecting the record was the fact that many of the sea-based changelings swam alone, only meeting up with others of their kind once a year. In some cases, as with Olivia and her mate, couples had disappeared, meaning the one person who might have reported the disappearance had also been taken. At last count, at least twenty-seven members had been confirmed as missing.

  “Given what you now know of Jim’s and Olivia’s actions,” Hawke said, “is it possible your missing went voluntarily?” His voice held the undertone of a growl, but it wasn’t a threat, simply an indication his wolf was very much present and listening.

  Miane’s changeling eyes didn’t reflect light like those of terrestrial changelings, instead seemed to suck it in. “No,” she said immediately. “The missing are all solitary by nature but they have intense ties to others despite the fact that they may only have met up once or twice a year. One confirmed missing member was half of a pair, would have never left his mate haunting the sea, searching for him.”