And his place was here, holding together a family that had as many damaged adults as it had innocent children. There were, however, some hopeful signs. From the start of the relocation of the squad’s “heart” to the valley, Aden had made it clear that regardless of their geographical assignments, each member of the squad had a confirmed space in a home here. Aden had been surprised—in a good way—at how many of the long-range scouts had begun to return to the valley in the time between assignments.
Jaya and Ivy, the two Es most involved with the valley, had begun to drop a quiet word in his ear when they felt a scout wasn’t ready to leave:
“His heart is too hurt.”
“She’s tired.”
“They need to heal.”
Aden had found ways to delay assignments by juggling squad members. It was easier now that so many of the older or “broken” Arrows had come out of hiding, and because his men and women weren’t being wasted on Ming’s personal vendettas. As for the training sessions with their young, those continued—sometimes a lesson was tough, but it was never brutal.
When Aden found Carolina sobbing behind one of the cabins that afternoon, he didn’t hesitate to scoop her up in his arms and rock her until she sniffled and told him what was wrong. “I can’t make my mind do what the teacher says.” Her lower lip shook. “I tried hard, Aden. I really tried.”
“You don’t have to do it all at once,” Aden told her, making a mental note to have a talk with the teacher involved. Walker was doing an incredible job of educating them in how to handle the increasing emotionality of their charges but not all had adapted well. He knew they, too, were trying and that it would take time. What gave him hope was that not one had asked for a transfer.
Rubbing away her tears with small fists, Carolina said, “Really?” A quiver of hope. “I won’t get in trouble?”
Aden sat down with her in his arms, his back against the cabin wall. “The reason you need to learn to control your mind is that you’re a Gradient 9.3 Tp showing signs of being a natural combat telepath.”
Carolina’s family had signed her over to the squad when she was three. She’d hurt herself by stepping onto a piece of broken glass. In her pain and panic, she’d broadcast so loudly that she’d incapacitated every individual within her home. Like a gun going off near a changeling’s ears, it had made them psychically deaf. Two younger members had ended up unconscious, one with what they’d initially thought was permanent brain damage. “Your strength means you can do a lot of harm with your mind if you’re not careful.”
Big eyes looking into his, solemn and sad. “I could hurt my friends?”
He didn’t want her to feel only those emotions when it came to her ability. “Yes, but if you learn control, you can also do amazing things to help people.”
A thoughtful silence. “Do you think I can learn?”
“I think you’re very smart and might one day be as strong and as disciplined as Zaira.” Pressing a kiss to the top of her head when she beamed at him, he set her on her feet again. “Go on and join your friends.” Arrow children were allowed to have friends now, but they were also always closely supervised. The fact was that their abilities were lethal, a truth none of them could afford to forget. But where before the protections had suffocated, they were now a simple safety net the children appeared to find comforting.
Taking another minute of quiet, he located Zaira’s mind on the PsyNet. She was so contained, her light shielded from prying eyes, but that didn’t matter, not so long as she trusted him with it. “Any news?” he asked.
“We found what might be another bolt-hole, but it doesn’t appear to have ever been used. Mica’s seeded it with electronic bugs, so we’ll hear the instant anyone returns.” Her mind reached out to his along their conscious bond. “We’re about to investigate the final three locations on our current list—I should be back in the valley by nightfall.”
“Persephone couldn’t have a better champion,” he said, knowing that if he heard any reports of the child’s body being found, he’d make damn sure Zaira never laid eyes on the heartbreaking discovery. It would break her. “I’ll see you tonight—I’m heading out soon to pick up a new recruit.”
That recruit was a two-year-old child who’d broken his mother’s arm during a telekinetic tantrum that had taken place in a large and busy shopping mall three hours earlier. The woman didn’t want to give up her son, but she needed help. Aden intended to offer it; whether or not the mother and child could move into the valley would depend on if the deep background check he’d initiated on the mother and her family showed any traitorous tendencies.
He was cutting through a sunlit city park on his way back from the assessment, his thoughts on how best to help the traumatized child, when he discovered that their hidden enemy hadn’t given up, had simply been waiting for an opportunity.
His instincts said the loving mother he’d just left hadn’t betrayed him, though the squad would no doubt debrief her to make certain. More than likely, the enemy had started to keep track of all rumors or reports of powerful or dangerous children, aware that, sooner or later, the squad would respond. Perhaps they’d intended to hit any Arrow who came to assess the child. It was pure luck that the Arrow in question was Aden.
And three hours was plenty enough time to get an operative in place.
This time, there were no theatrics, no complicated setup, nothing to warn him so he could strike out with his abilities. He felt the danger only at the last instant, the bullet whining through the air behind him.
He was shot.
He had a feeling the projectile had been meant to hit his skull, take him out in a single split second, but he’d listened to his instincts and moved at the last moment. The bullet entered through the back of his neck and punched out the front. He knew it missed his spinal cord because he still had functionality in his arms and legs, but from the blood spraying out, it had hit a major artery.
Drawing very slightly on Vasic’s telekinesis because he didn’t want to weaken his friend—who was currently with Zaira’s team—he clamped a hand over the gushing wound and, managing to stay on his feet, projected a shield that stopped the second bullet. I’m hit, he telepathed to Abbot; the Tk had been waiting for him at the end of the park so they could do a discreet ’port back to the valley.
His attacker took off at high speed.
Abbot ’ported in, took one look at Aden, and didn’t bother to give chase. Placing his hand on Aden’s shoulder, the other man took him directly inside a medical facility maintained by the squad. Aden’s knees buckled on arrival, the blood loss critical. But even then, his mind, it tried to reach out to the one person for whom he was the first priority, the one person who was his own.
Except they weren’t truly bonded and with his blood pumping out with each beat of his heart . . . she was too far.
• • •
ZAIRA felt the faint whisper of Aden’s psychic touch just as they cleared the final property on their list, but when she responded, she felt only blankness. Nothingness. Ice infiltrated her veins. Grabbing Vasic’s arm, she said, “Aden—go to Aden!”
The two of them found themselves in a white corridor splattered with blood a heartbeat later, two nurses and a doctor working on the man who lay on the floor, his skin pale and his white shirt saturated with red where it hadn’t been cut away by the medical personnel. “No.” It was a keening whisper.
Dropping to her knees, she found his bloodied hand, gripped it. “No.” You don’t get to go. You don’t get to leave me alone.
There was no answer from the one person who had never let her down.
“We need to get him into the OR!” The doctor looked up. “Vasic, teleport him in.”
That quickly, Aden’s touch was gone from her hand, the medics ’ported away with him. Kneeling on the floor staring at the red on her palm, Zaira felt the rage inside her rise in a
murderous wave. She got slowly to her feet, and by the time Vasic returned, she was heading toward Abbot, the younger Tk standing shell-shocked in the hallway.
“I need to get Judd,” Vasic said. “He may be able to do what the medics can’t.”
Zaira heard him through the rage. She didn’t know Judd well, had believed him another Tk. Clearly, he was something more. Vasic was gone on the next breath, and all she wanted to do was annihilate the person who had hurt Aden.
• • •
VASIC couldn’t teleport to Judd, not with the way the other man’s shields were structured, so he did the next best thing: got himself to SnowDancer territory, then called Judd. “Aden’s hit. Dying.”
Judd asked for a telepathic visual and, using it, teleported himself to Vasic’s side, his face set in harsh lines. “What can I do?”
Taking him back to the operating room, Vasic watched the Tk-Cell move in to attempt to repair the damage to Aden’s artery and veins. It was so severe the medics couldn’t plug the hole—Vasic had heard one doctor use the word “shredded,” and from what Vasic had seen, the bullet had been designed to cause maximum damage.
Judd might not be able to do much, either, his ability to move the cells of the body a slow and careful process that might not beat the ticking clock on Aden’s life. But each time the monitor beeped, it meant Aden was alive.
Vasic listened to that monitor for too long.
By the time he realized he hadn’t told Zaira what was happening and went back out into the corridor, she was gone.
PSYNET BEACON: BREAKING NEWS
Aden Kai has been shot. Unconfirmed reports are coming in from those who witnessed the shooting. All state it was a killing hit.
“His jugular was torn wide open, or more likely his carotid, maybe both,” one witness stated. “Look at all the blood on the grass. It just gushed out.”
“No one can survive that,” said a medic who was on his way to a shift at a nearby clinic at the time of the shooting. “He’s dead.”
The Beacon is attempting to make contact with the squad for verification.
Chapter 76
ABBOT HADN’T WANTED to leave Zaira alone in the leafy and sunshine-laden park where Aden had been shot, but she gave him no choice. “You need to cover Aden’s security shift in the valley. Go.”
The younger Arrow hesitated, his sea blue eyes scanning the people who’d drawn back from the center of the scene at their arrival. “You’re not safe here alone.”
That was what she was counting on. “I’m giving you a direct order.”
“Yes, sir.”
Staring at the blood on the grass after he left, Zaira crouched down to touch her fingers to it. It was still wet, the speed of events fast enough that the inevitable gawkers hadn’t stepped close enough to contaminate the scene. Driven by rage, her first thought had been to track the shooter, but then she’d realized there was an easier way. If this individual had shot Aden in broad daylight, then he or she was brazen enough to try again. A second public attack on an Arrow would cement the conspirators’ point that no one was safe.
So she’d give them an easy target.
Only Zaira didn’t play by the same rules as Aden. She didn’t only do surface telepathic scans as she waited while ostensibly checking the evidence; she went as deep as she possibly could without causing damage or alerting her targets. Part of her was still thinking, still able to remember that if she smashed the shields of blameless people, it would undo all the work Aden had done to place the Arrows in a position where the public didn’t fear them so much that they sought to hunt them out of existence.
We can protect ourselves, but what of the Carolinas, the Tavishes, and the other children we don’t even know about yet? If people start to fear Arrows, it’s a short step to start eliminating those who might grow up into Arrows.
Aden’s words. Words she could still hear through the roar of rage. As she could feel her small breakfast companion’s heartbeat as she sat so vulnerable and happy beside her. As she could hear the hope in Pip’s voice when he asked her when he could go play with Jojo again.
She would keep the innocents safe. She couldn’t promise the same for the guilty.
A few people dared come closer as she worked, including a man who said, “Is Aden Kai all right? We were some distance away so we couldn’t help, but we saw the shooter.”
“He’s fine.” No matter what, Aden needed to remain invincible in the minds of the public. “Can you describe the shooter?”
“A runner. Male, I’m fairly certain. I’m sorry, that’s all I saw.”
The witness was human, his shields paper-thin.
Her deep scan of his mind told her he wasn’t lying. So she scanned the next person and the next and the next, frustrated only by the changelings’ tough natural shields and by those Psy who had good enough shielding that her intrusion would be noted.
Those people she evaluated visually.
Two were mothers with very young children in prams, the third an elderly woman who walked with the aid of a cane. She felt confident in eliminating them from the suspect pool, though she took mental snapshots of their faces so she could trace their identities should it become necessary.
Every other individual who came within her proximity was subjected to a deep scan that told her all their secrets, all their nightmares. She didn’t care about any of it, discarding all data that didn’t relate directly to Aden and the attempts on his life.
He wouldn’t agree with her choice, would say she was violating people. Zaira didn’t care. Not when he was lying bleeding in a hospital bed. Not when his mind had disconnected from her own as his psychic abilities shut down. Not when his blood still glistened on the grass in front of her.
Eyes burning with what she told herself was pure rage, she hit on another changeling mind. This one was a healthy adult male in running clothes. That alone didn’t make him guilty; there were a number of runners milling around, the park having a well-utilized track. Because she couldn’t use her telepathy to clear him, she watched him with her peripheral vision while she used a small scanner she’d grabbed off a medical tray as a prop, as if she was gathering data from the scene.
The truth was that the tool was meant for DNA scans and loaded with the profiles of those in the squad; all it flashed was Aden’s name, his blood painting the grass. The rage boiled hotter with each iteration of his name, each reminder that he’d been hurt, might be dying.
When she continued in her apparent work without doing anything flashy or interesting, the crowd began to disperse, until only a white-haired human couple and the changeling runner were left. She didn’t discard the elderly pair until a deep scan showed them as having no ulterior motives. The changeling made no aggressive moves, but she stayed within his reach, within shooting distance.
Her patience was rewarded five minutes later as he slid his hand surreptitiously to the back of his shorts. By the time he brought out a sleek gun complete with silencer, she was already moving. Her body slammed his to the ground as his finger touched the trigger, the shot thudding into a nearby sculpture. The human pair screamed while the shooter grunted and tried to punch her in the face, but Zaira had calculated his muscle mass and strength in the time he’d watched her, had already devised countermeasures against his greater strength.
She was also powered by rage.
Avoiding the blow, she smashed a single fist down at the precise angle to do maximum damage.
Blood splurted. His eyes altering from human blue to a slitted black, he swiped at her with a clawed hand. She flipped out of reach and deliberately waited until he was almost upright to kick out with one booted foot and dislocate his knee. He crumpled to a sideways position on his knees with a scream of fury, this changeling who had shot the only person who had ever loved her.
Not giving him time to recover, she kicked again, smashing his jaw.
Another kick, this one to his ribs. She deliberately avoided his head, not wanting him unconscious, wanting him to feel this, feel the cold rage that drove her. She saw others join the human couple, saw phones turned in her direction as people recorded the violence, but that didn’t stop her. Today, Aden wasn’t there to stop her, either, his solid, stable presence missing from her mind.
The aloneness howled, the rage creature wanting blood, wanting to brutalize this man who might have stolen Aden from her forever.
Taking the shooter to the ground once more with another well-aimed kick, where he lay on his back and struggled to breathe through his broken nose and shattered jaw, his face smeared red, she stepped on one thick wrist so he couldn’t get her with his claws, and when he lifted his other hand to slice at her, kicked out with her boot at an angle that would’ve broken a Psy male’s bones.
Changeling bones were tougher, so the bone didn’t break, but she did enough damage that his hand didn’t seem to work as it should. When he scrabbled at her, there was no power in it, his claws not even penetrating the tough fabric of her uniform pants.
He was totally at her mercy.
When she glimpsed his form begin to shimmer, she said, “Don’t shift.” Her own gun in her hand, pointed directly at him. “You do and I’ll shoot directly into the shift.” She didn’t know exactly what that would do, but she had a feeling it would be fatal. “It’ll be interesting to see if the pieces of you that end up scattered all over this park will be from your human or your animal form.”
The man’s body solidified, the threat clearly finding its mark.
She thought about how to torture him and a hundred different methods popped into her mind. Sliding away her gun and lifting the foot not on his wrist—which she’d slowly crushed and which had to be causing him agony, she placed it very carefully on his sternum and met his gaze. The torture was psychological this time.
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