Caressed by Ice p-3

by Nalini Singh

  Still. Be still.

  An illogical request, but she trusted him—and his abilities—too much not to realize he had to have a plan. She froze, even though the hyenas were getting perilously close.

  Open.

  She felt a push on her mind. Her mouth dried, her heart closed into a tight shell, and fear bloomed on her tongue. No! She didn’t want anyone in her mind ever again.

  Alright. But don’t move. Trust me.

  The hyenas were going to see her at any moment, but she obeyed his order. And when her skin seemed to shift over her skeleton, she tried not to panic. Then she felt her bones change shape in a way that wasn’t anything similar to how they transformed during the shift from human to animal. It was too much. Her reactions were born from instinct, hard to control under normal conditions, impossible in a situation where she was already hovering an inch from panic. She would’ve fought then, disturbed the quiet and given herself away, but he set her free.

  She hit the ground hard despite the thick layer of snow. Blinking away the strange disorientation that made it hard to focus, she got up, shook her head, and prepared to run…but found the landscape startlingly unfamiliar. She was no longer anywhere near the hyenas. Safe, she was safe. But Judd was nowhere to be seen.

  “Where are you?” She scanned the area around her, but the snow lay unbroken. He hadn’t passed through here. It took real effort for her to think past the wolf’s need to go to Judd’s aid, to help defend their territory, but she hunkered down to wait.

  As things stood, Judd knew where she was and could find her more easily if she didn’t move. It was common sense. That didn’t make her any less scared for him. He was out there alone against a pack of hyenas—hyenas who should’ve been too terrified to come anywhere near SnowDancer land. Their boldness told her they were packing weapons more dangerous than simply claws and teeth. “Come on, Judd,” she whispered. “Where are you?”

  Judd was on the verge of flaming out—what he’d done with Brenna had taken a massive amount of energy. He briefly considered teleporting a gun from the cabin using what power remained, but realized the act would wipe him out and leave him a sitting duck. In human terms, he was running on fumes. An hour at most and he’d collapse on the psychic plane, his abilities useless for the next twenty-four hours or more. The physical collapse would hit a few hours after the psychic one.

  If this had happened while he’d been uplinked to the PsyNet, his psychic star would’ve flamed red for a few seconds just before he crashed, long enough for others to notice and use to their advantage. That was why Psy went to great lengths to avoid flameouts. It left them vulnerable—while their basic shields would hold, the more sophisticated protections tended to collapse, giving enemies a near defenseless victim.

  Out here, however, even his family might not notice his condition. Because of the difficulty of keeping three immature minds from inadvertently dropping out of the LaurenNet and attempting to rejoin the PsyNet, they had been training Sienna, Marlee, and Toby to stay out of the LaurenNet as much as possible. It was a hard task—living on the psychic plane as well as the physical was natural for them. But their safety had to come first.

  Having circled close to the intruders, he allowed his body to lean against a tree. While the physical collapse could be held off, it would sap his energy bit by bit, so he had to conserve it where he could. That collapse itself was nothing normal. Most Psy only flamed out on the psychic level. It was the nature of his abilities that altered things for him.

  It makes you vulnerable. Ming LeBon’s mental voice, the voice that had shaped so much of who Judd had become. However, as it appears to be an unavoidable side effect of your abilities, I suggest you train your body to survive on the bare minimum of energy.

  Judd had been fourteen at the time and in thrall to his mentor. Ming possessed one of the strongest minds he had ever seen. The senior Arrow’s ability in mental combat was unparalleled, but what set Ming apart from his peers was that he’d trained his body, too. He had a deadly facility in several human disciplines, including karate and the rare form known as katana.

  The Way of the Sword.

  Except that it used no blades but those created by skillful use of the body, honing men to a lethal edge. Judd had studied under Ming, then later under a human teacher, spending an entire year in the freezing chill of Old Sapporo. The abandoned Japanese city was so inhospitable, it was populated only by those who wanted to push their bodies to the limit, such as the disciples of katana. Though the highly offensive martial art—developed during the Japan-Korea war over half a century ago—could be used to kill, its worth to the Psy lay in the extreme mental and physical discipline it taught.

  But even katana only went so far with a Tk on the edge of a flameout. Expanding his senses, he began to collect data. He wasn’t changeling so it could’ve been difficult for him to identify the exact species, but some of the hyenas had shifted to their animal forms. There were twenty in the scan radius and many registered as carrying weapons. He needed a closer look at those weapons.

  Making a quick decision, he moved closer, using what he’d learned in Old Sapporo to check the creeping shroud of exhaustion and keep his brain functioning. Once he’d positioned himself in the direct path of one of the hyenas in human form, he leaned against another tree and did the thing that only his subdesignation could. He blurred his body, becoming effectively invisible. It had been postulated that this aspect of his ability sprang from the same core as that of the F-Psy, that he was actually bending time.

  Concentrate.

  Wandering thought patterns were a sign of oncoming flameout. He managed to drag his mind back under control in the nick of time. A hyena male walked past, a weapon strapped to his back and another in his arms. Pinpoint migraines began to spark behind Judd’s eyelids, but he maintained the “invisibility” until the invader was well out of range. Then he focused on getting out of the hot zone without leaving a trail.

  The explosion came half an hour later.

  Brenna heard the bang before she saw the smoke spiral up into the sky. The urge to head in that direction was so overwhelming that she had to grit her teeth to restrain it. Her family had not raised a stupid wolf. With the snow, the blaze wouldn’t accelerate. Furthermore, the wood was treated to be flame-retardant and she had neither the firepower nor the backup to take on a whole pack of those damn scavengers.

  But her frustration at being so helpless wasn’t the worst of it—she was scared to death that they had gotten to Judd. Then he walked out of the forest. Racing to him, she put a hand on his arm. “What happened?” She took a second look. “Judd, your eyes!” They were pure black, no whites, no irises.

  “They blew up part of the cabin,” he said, ignoring her cry. “Given the noise, SnowDancer patrols are probably already heading this way.”

  “I know that!” Shock submerging under worry, she scanned his ashen face. “I want to know what happened to you!”

  “I used too much power.” Clipped words.

  “When you got me out.” It wasn’t a question. All those weeks of healing with Sascha had taught her a few things about how Psy gifts functioned. “Because I wouldn’t let you into my mind. I’m right, aren’t I?”

  “That’s not an issue we have time to discuss.” He jerked his head in the direction of the cabin, his eyes beginning to fade back to normal. “My tactical knowledge says the hyenas are long gone by now. We should head back there to meet whoever responds.” He began moving.

  She ran to catch up. “Are you going to be able to cope? Your eyes…”

  He gave her a sideways glance so full of male arrogance, the wolf in her wanted to snarl. “Psy eyes do that when a large power expenditure is involved—I’m fully capable of making the necessary report.”

  “I should learn to keep my worry to myself where you’re concerned,” she muttered.

  “That would be wise.”

  Scowling at his back, she decided to concentrate on something that didn’t
make her want to go clawed. “How did you get me out?”

  “Teleportation.”

  Utter silence in her mind, the cold emptiness of angry fear.

  If he could teleport, that meant he was a telekinetic. A very strong Tk. Like him. The butcher. “When were you going to tell me?” Her heart felt like a block of ice.

  “Never,” he answered in a clipped tone. “You’re not rational about Tk-Psy and your prejudice bleeds onto others.”

  She didn’t quite understand what he was getting at, but she knew it wasn’t complimentary. “This is between you and me, no one else.”

  He stopped and faced her, perfect Psy beauty and ruthless control. “No, Brenna. It’s about you, your family, the entire den. You start hissing at me and they’ll follow.”

  “Since when do you care what anyone thinks?”

  “Since I realized that Marlee is beginning to exhibit signs of having at least some Tk in her skill set. It didn’t show up in her initial tests but that occasionally happens with children who are very strong in another ability. But now it’s rising to the surface.”

  Anger flashed to guilt, then back again. “She’s a baby. No one in the den would go after a pup!” Her face burned at the idea, but at the same time, something else was trying to rise, information she couldn’t quite grasp. All she knew was that it had something to do with the connection between Judd and Santano Enrique.

  He folded his arms. “She’s not going to stay a baby. If you poison the den against telekinetics, where’s that going to leave her when she grows up?”

  Her claws threatened to release and the rage washed away that ethereal piece of knowledge floating in her brain. “That’s what you think of me? Well, fuck you!” Spinning away, she sprinted the rest of the way to the cabin fueled by red fury. It didn’t improve her mood to realize that Judd kept pace. He was Psy—he shouldn’t have been able to keep pace. But damn if she was going to ask him what he was doing to make himself changeling-fast. “The bottom-feeders are gone.” Fragments of wood and glass lay scattered on the snow, the air thick with the astringent scent of explosive chemicals. But curiously, the cabin wasn’t too badly damaged—the blast had only taken out one discrete section.

  Going down on his haunches, Judd held out a hand. “Do you have a handkerchief?”

  “Do I look like I have a handkerchief?”

  “Any clean cloth will do.”

  “Wait.” Skirting the debris, she went to a window.

  “Don’t enter,” Judd warned. “We haven’t checked it for explosives.”

  She gave him an evil look and, pushing up the window from the outside—after ensuring that it wasn’t rigged to blow—reached in to pull open a drawer. The small kitchen towel was in her hand a second later. “Here.”

  “Thank you.” Using the soft cloth, he picked up something she couldn’t see.

  “What is it?” she snapped more than said.

  “A trigger. Unfortunately very generic.”

  “Maybe the techs can get something off it.” SnowDancers made it their business to keep on top of new technology so they could beat the Psy at their own game. She used to help with the technical stuff…before.

  “Oh,” Judd murmured, “I think there’s no maybe about it.” He rose, the trigger in hand.

  “You think it was planted?” She caught the scent of Pack in the wind. “Packmates incoming—they must’ve been in the area, to get here so fast.”

  “I sent Hawke a message this morning stating I’d detected signs of unauthorized access and suggesting it might be wise to inspect the border sections adjoining my watch.”

  Wolves began pouring out of the forest. She recognized Riley and Andrew. Shit.

  CHAPTER 16

  Brenna averted her eyes as her brothers shifted, having no desire to see them in the raw.

  “I’m going to kill you” were the first words out of Andrew’s mouth. “What the hell do you think you’re doing with my sister?”

  “Later.” Hawke’s authoritative voice.

  Brenna looked up and found him standing across from Judd. He was dressed and in human form, having apparently run that way while the others had gone wolf. It was an indication of his strength, part of what made him alpha.

  “You made good time,” Judd commented to Hawke, then held out the trigger. “I have a feeling you’ll find some prints on this. Convenient ones.”

  “You mean like this?” Riley’s voice.

  “What is it?” Brenna asked, still not looking. Of course she’d seen others naked after a shift—it was normal. But these were her brothers.

  “A sweatshirt,” Judd told her.

  “A sweatshirt that smells like leopard.” Riley again. “The whole area reeks of cat.”

  The silence that fell after his words was ominous. DarkRiver and SnowDancer had been business allies for over a decade but their alliance had turned into a blood bond mere months ago. Trust was a dicey thing.

  Hawke’s face was grim as he glanced at the damning piece of evidence. “If Lucas’s people had been behind this, they would have done a better job of cleaning up. I can smell another signature below the leopard markers.”

  The others frowned and Brenna saw several pairs of eyes widen in puzzlement as they tried to sort through the scent layers to identify the vaguely “sweaty” taint of something that shouldn’t have been there.

  “It was a pack of hyenas,” Brenna said into the quiet.

  Everyone stared. Chief among their reaction was disbelief.

  “Those scavengers?” Drew said at last. “You sure?”

  Scowling, she rounded on him, keeping her eyes firmly above his neck. Her brother, like most changelings, was totally comfortable nude. It was her reaction that was unnatural. She knew that. She just didn’t want to examine the reason why…was scared to discover what else Enrique had mutilated inside of her. “I didn’t lose my nose during the abduction, only half my mind.”

  Andrew winced. “Christ, you’re mean when you’re pissed. But can you blame me? Hyenas don’t go near anything that might bite back.”

  “We need to talk,” Judd said to Hawke.

  The alpha gave a sharp nod. “I want everyone except Riley, Drew, and Indigo to start running a search perimeter. Try to pick up the hyenas’ trail. I’ll make a few calls—we might get lucky if the eagles were in the area.”

  “Eagles?” Brenna looked up as if she might see some. “How many?”

  “A small flight. They’re here to attend a human wedding.”

  Clearly they’d made sure to ask permission from Hawke before setting foot or taking wing in the area under SnowDancer control. Otherwise, they would’ve been labeled enemies and taken out. A harsh law, but one that allowed stability in the agressive world of predatory changelings. Without it, the carnage that had been the eighteenth century’s Territorial Wars would never have ended.

  Hawke looked at his soldiers. “Go.”

  For a stunning few seconds, the world shimmered with a thousand brilliant colors as the soldiers shifted. Then wolves dashed off in all directions, their paws flying swift and silent over the snow. Brenna’s entire body went immobile as she watched them move, so strong, so beautiful. Envy was a hateful buzz in her head, one that had the power to turn her bitter and full of spite—Enrique might not have killed her, but he’d succeeded in crippling her.

  You are not crippled, not now, not ever.

  The memory had her looking away from the sleek forms of her packmates to Judd. He was watching her, no hint of an apology in his features. Her earlier fury reignited, but Hawke spoke before she could let her temper get the better of her.

  “Tell me what you found.”

  Judd responded with military precision. “They were carrying high-grade laser-powered weapons. None are readily available on the general market.”

  “Psy supplied?”

  “High likelihood. They’re produced by Psy companies.”

  Riley changed position and it caught her attention—her older br
other didn’t make random movements. It was Andrew who was the more physically impatient.

  Hawke had also noted the action. “You have something to add?”

  “For a race that dislikes using weapons,” Riley commented, “the Psy sure seem to have some advanced ones.”

  “What makes you think the Psy have an aversion to weapons?” Judd asked, so eerily calm it made her want to shiver.

  Riley stared hard enough to have sent lesser men cowering. “They’ve never used them to take us out.”

  “Only because such an open move would cause too big a ripple. It might destabilize the economy if people thought a Psy-changeling war was in the making.” Judd’s arctic tone was akin to the baring of fangs by a wolf. “That’s why they prefer quieter, less detectable methods of removing changelings from the equation.”

  “Like setting us against the cats. Exactly how stupid do they think we are?” Hawke pulled a sleek black phone out of his back pocket and punched in a code. “Lucas,” he said a second later. “We may have a situation.” A short pause and then Hawke’s face went preternaturally still.

  Brenna stood in tense silence as her alpha listened to whatever it was the DarkRiver alpha was telling him, blindingly aware of the unsettling quiet of Judd by her side. A Tk. One of the same breed that had tortured her, broken her.

  You’re being stupid and childish, a part of her mind said. No, she wasn’t, replied another part, one that had been bruised and bloodied.

  “How bad?” Hawke asked, his savage tone snapping her back to the present. “Do I need to pull out my people?” Another pause. “Try hyena. I’ll see you as soon as you can make it.” He ended the call and returned the phone to his pocket.

  “They were also hit,” Judd guessed.

  “Someone tried to snatch three cubs from a city kindergarten.”

  “Cubs hurt?” Indigo finally spoke.

  Hawke shook his head. “It was in Chinatown, near their HQ. Kids went cat and roared their heads off. A teacher and several nearby shopkeepers got to them in seconds, but it was long enough for the attacker to blend into the streets and lose himself in the crowd. He also found the time to leave behind a piece of his clothing.”