by Nalini Singh
“Hey, Lucas. I have the designs.” Kit pointed to the pile of document tubes on the table, his gaze shifting to Sascha and then skating away.
“Where’s Zara?” Lucas didn’t take his eyes off Dorian—the other male hadn’t stopped staring at Sascha since the moment they’d entered the room. Beside him, Sascha had gone preternaturally silent, as though she knew how precarious the situation was.
Kit pulled at the cuffs of his brown cable-knit sweater and shoved a hand through his hair. “She got delayed.” His tone held a subtle appeal—he didn’t want to discuss Pack business with an outsider in the room.
Lucas spoke without looking away from the lethal fury that was Dorian. “Would you give us a moment, Sascha?”
“I’ll wait outside.” She turned and walked out the door, pulling it shut behind her.
“What happened?” he asked.
The other man bared his teeth. “SnowDancer lost a female today.”
Lucas felt rage arc through his bloodstream. “When?”
“Dorian said two hours ago.” It was Kit who answered. “One of Hawke’s lieutenants just called him.”
“Which means we have a week before a body turns up.” Dorian’s voice was raw, his fists clenched so tight that the tendons in his neck stood out. “He’ll keep her for that week and when he’s finished doing whatever it is he does to them, he’ll slice her up and leave her someplace that was once a safe haven.”
Lucas didn’t even try to soothe the other man. “Do they know anything?” Despite his rejection of torture as a way to find the killer’s identity, a fury as cold as Dorian’s had burned in Lucas’s heart since Kylie’s murder. She’d been under his protection, a juvenile not much older than Kit. What had been done to her had been inhuman and the panther in him craved justice.
“No.” Dorian shoved both hands through his hair. “Why don’t you drag your pet Psy in here and force her to tell us who he is?” His eyes held such pure menace that Lucas knew he couldn’t be allowed anywhere near Sascha.
“She might not know anything,” he pointed out. “Kit?”
“Yes.”
“Go tell Zara we need her.” His eyes held a different message. It wasn’t the wildcat they needed, but their healer. Many of the other juveniles wouldn’t have understood. However, Kit was already being trained for soldier duties—it was the only way to keep a future alpha out of trouble.
The boy nodded. “I’ll get on it.” He ran from the room.
It was lucky for them that the healer had come into the city proper to take the cubs shopping. Her presence here was vital—Dorian was almost at breaking point. Until this moment, Lucas hadn’t known just how fragile the sentinel’s control was. He could almost see the rage clawing behind those surfer-blue eyes, ready to maim, torture, kill.
“Kidnapping one Psy will give us nothing. They aren’t like us—they’ll cut family dead without a thought.” He walked over to stand in front of Dorian, keeping his body between him and the exit.
Suddenly Dorian’s head snapped up to focus on something behind Lucas. “She’s part of their damn hive mind! Get her to tell us where the SnowDancer is before it’s too fucking late!” His voice vibrated with anger but he wasn’t completely out of control. Yet.
Lucas didn’t have to turn to know that Sascha was in the doorway—he could smell her. “Leave, Sascha.” The panther wanted to grip her by the nape and haul her out of harm’s way.
“No.” Dorian pushed at his chest hard enough to have cracked a human’s ribs. His latency had robbed him purely of the ability to change, nothing else. “Tell her what this freak’s been doing. Tell her what her precious Council is hiding from her.”
Sascha took a step into the room and closed the door. “What’s he talking about?” There was steel in that icy tone, resolve in the way she walked around to stand less than a foot away. No fear clouded those night-sky eyes.
Lucas continued to keep himself between her and Dorian. “A serial killer has been preying on changeling women for several years.” The time for subterfuge was over—a life hung in the balance.
Sascha’s expression didn’t change. “We don’t have serial killers in our population.”
“Bullshit!” Dorian spit out. “The killer is Psy and your Council knows it. You’re a race of psychopaths!”
“No, we’re not.”
“No conscience, no heart, no feelings! How else do you define psychopath?”
“How do you know that it’s one of us?” She tried to get around Lucas.
He pushed her back with a single hand. “Don’t get too close. Right now, Dorian would settle for ripping out your throat in lieu of the murderer’s. His sister was one of the victims.” He made sure she saw truth in his expression.
After a short silence, she took a step back and allowed him to hold Dorian at bay. “How do you know it’s a Psy?” she repeated.
“We detected the scent of a Psy at the site of Kylie’s murder.” Lucas would remember the pervading ugliness of that scent to the day he died. “You have a very distinctive smell to us. Unlike humans or changelings, you give off only coldness, a metallic stink that repels.” It was why so many changelings refused to work with the Psy or live in buildings created by them. The taint, some felt, could never be erased.
He thought he saw hurt shadow Sascha’s face but when she spoke, her voice was calm. “If this is a serial, why hasn’t it been reported? I haven’t heard a single thing about it on the Net or through the human-changeling media.”
Dorian turned to bang his palms flat against the window. The glass cracked. “Your Council killed the reports like they killed the investigations. Changelings and a couple of humans have tried to get the cases marked as the work of a serial, but they’ve been blocked over and over.”
Lucas met Sascha’s intent gaze and decided to take a step that could be a mistake. They had no more time to go softly, softly. Either his instincts about Sascha were right or he’d never had a chance. “Detectives are working underground on their own time and changeling packs are sharing information across the affected areas.
“Given enough time, we will hunt down the killer.” He had no doubt about that. All the predatory changelings had one thing in common—if one of their own was hurt, they’d track the perpetrator with grim determination even if it took years.
“What’s changed? Why are you so angry?” she asked Dorian and there was something almost like pain in her tone.
The sentinel didn’t speak, his head bowed, palms pressed against the glass. Lucas knew that rather than striking out, he was withdrawing into himself and that couldn’t be allowed. He was Pack. He would never be left to suffer on his own.
He put one hand on Dorian’s shoulder. It was enough to hold him to the bonds of Pack until Tamsyn arrived. “SnowDancer lost a female two hours ago. If we don’t find her within seven days, she’ll be discovered mutilated in a way that would make even a Psy throw up.”
There was a flurry at the door and Tamsyn ran into the room alongside Kit and his older sister, Rina, a curvaceous, sensual female with the rank of soldier. Lucas turned to Sascha. “Wait for me outside.” This was Pack business. And no matter how much he craved her, she was an outsider. In spite of the chance he’d taken in telling her the truth, she might even be the enemy.
She looked at Dorian for a long time then silently turned and walked away. Rina closed the door behind her, shutting her out.
Sascha went down to the public lounge at the bottom floor of the building, Dorian’s anguish continuing to pound at her. She’d never felt such excruciating agony. It took everything she had not to scream in unison with him. It was almost as if the pain was drawn to her, as if she were sucking it inside, where it could mingle with her own unbearable hurt.
… you give off only coldness, a metallic stink that repels…
She couldn’t forget either Lucas’s words or the hatred she’d felt directed at her. Dorian, Kit, that beautiful blonde female, and even Tamsyn. They’d all l
ooked at her as if she were the embodiment of evil. Perhaps she was. If they were right, she belonged to a race which would allow murder in order to protect their code of Silence.
A stab of pain slashed across her heart. She gasped and tried to stifle it but it only grew worse. She had to stop it, had to find some way of helping Dorian before he killed her. Locating the leopard was easy. He pulsated with anger and rage, the air around him pure darkness churning with endless echoes of pain.
Psychically, she didn’t know what she was doing. No one had ever trained her in this. She didn’t even know what it was that she was trying to do. Reaching into the darkness enclosing him, she gathered up his pain into her arms. There was so much of it that it overflowed. Determined, she kept gathering until the shadows around him softened and the agony in her heart became easier to endure.
Her arms were full of sorrow and she could think of only one way to destroy it, an instinctive understanding that came from a buried part of her mind. But she couldn’t do it here. Barely able to see, she walked out of the building, still holding her incomprehensible harvest.
Getting into her vehicle, she programmed in the destination and set the car to automatic. The sorrow was getting heavier and heavier. She had to get to the safety of her apartment before her mind cracked wide open under the pressure. Already her flaw was obvious in the tremble in her fingertips, in the hollow beat of her heart.
With most of her remaining energy, she reinforced her mental shields against the PsyNet. The energy that kept her alive was tied into those shields. If they failed, it would be because she’d died and there was nothing left to sustain them. She only hoped she made it inside the walls of her apartment before the darkness became too much, before it destroyed her from the inside out.
Lucas felt the pain being drawn away out of Dorian. From his position cradling the other man’s body against his chest, he said, “Tamsyn, what did you do?”
The healer ran her hands over Dorian’s face. “I’ve barely started. This wasn’t me. Dorian, what did you feel?”
“Like someone took the pain and left… peace behind.” He shook his head and sat up. There was no shame in him at having leaned on Pack. That was what they were there for—if Lucas fell, Dorian would do the same for him.
Rina linked her fingers to Dorian’s. “You feel…” Lost for words, the soldier turned to Tamsyn.
“Balanced,” Tamsyn said, as Lucas got to his feet.
Dorian frowned and pushed back his hair. “It was the damnedest thing. If felt like warmth spreading inside me, shoving out the rage. I can think again. For the first time since Kylie was taken, I can think.” He let Rina wrap her arms around him and lay her head against his chest.
Dorian ran his hand over Rina’s bare arm and Lucas knew he was grounding himself in the feel of her skin, in the way she smelled of Pack. This had nothing to do with male-female sharing and everything to do with Pack healing.
“If it wasn’t you, then who?” Lucas’s heart was thumping with a suspicion so outlandish, he could barely bring himself to believe it. But his instincts had never lied about this one thing and he’d felt the flare of power.
“I don’t know anyone who could do what Dorian’s described.” Tamsyn paused. “I’ve heard rumors but they’re just that—rumors.”
Dorian looked at Lucas. “It doesn’t matter. Not now. We have to find the SnowDancer female before the wolves go berserk. At this point they’re in shock but that’s going to turn into rage.”
“We’ll find her.” It was an alpha’s promise. “I’m going to ask Sascha to help us.”
“A Psy?” Rina’s voice was harsh. “They don’t even help their own children.”
“We don’t have a choice.” There was no other way to infiltrate the PsyNet.
Sascha was gone. According to the ground-floor receptionist, she hadn’t looked so good.
“Got in her car and took off.” The woman shrugged. “I was going to ask if she was okay but you know, she’s one of them so I figured she wouldn’t want to be bothered.”
“Thanks.” Lucas shoved both his hands into his pockets.
Rina, who’d come down with him, said, “Think she’s gone back to report to the Council?”
It was a valid suspicion but something in Lucas rebelled against accepting it. Pulling out his phone, he pressed her code and waited. No answer. “I guess we’ll know soon enough. Tell the sentinels to alert the pack.” If the Council discovered that DarkRiver was working to bring them down, they’d launch a preemptive strike.
The Psy might not be able to manipulate the minds of changelings without a huge expenditure of power, but they could kill if they were determined enough. The most vulnerable were the cubs, who hadn’t yet finished developing the natural shields which made older changelings that much harder to hurt.
He watched Rina take off as he pushed in another code. Within ten minutes, every member of DarkRiver would be contacted. The weaker ones would head to the safe houses, where Pack soldiers could protect them. The one advantage changelings had was that the Psy had to come very close to attack them through psychic means. No Psy had ever killed a changeling from afar.
But today, someone had reached Dorian from afar.
CHAPTER 9
The call was answered. “Hawke.”
“We might’ve had a leak to the Council about the hunt. Protect your pack.”
“Anyone touches another one of my people, I’ll gut them.” The ruthless alpha of the SnowDancers wasn’t kidding. “I’m declaring open season on the Psy.”
An image of Sascha’s bloodied body flashed into Lucas’s mind. His hand squeezed the phone. “We might be able to find your packmate in time.”
“How sure are you?”
“The probability is low but there is a chance. If you move now, we’ll lose the opportunity and large numbers of both our packs.” The SnowDancers were merciless killers but so were the Psy. Both sides would suffer massive casualties.
A pause that hummed with anger. “I won’t be able to control my people once the body is found.”
“I wouldn’t want you to.” Lucas had barely managed to restrain DarkRiver after Kylie’s murder. The only reason they’d listened to him was that three of their females had recently birthed cubs. No one had wanted to leave the babies vulnerable. Because once the alphas and soldiers were gone, the cubs and their mothers would simply be exterminated. The Psy had no sense of mercy.
“If you go to war, we’ll go with you.” It was a promise that Lucas had made to his pack. In the months since burying Kylie, they’d made arrangements to hide the cubs with other packs, packs which had seeded from DarkRiver and would raise the children as their own if everything went to hell.
A short silence. The SnowDancers didn’t play well with others but Lucas hoped that Hawke would listen to the voice of reason, that he’d trust in the strength of their alliance. The alternative was carnage on a scale the world hadn’t seen in centuries.
“You’re asking me to wait while Brenna dies.”
“Seven days, Hawke. Time enough to track her.” He trusted his gut. Sascha wouldn’t betray them… betray him. “You know I’m right. Once the Psy realize we’re hunting them, she will die. They’ll do anything to cover their trail.”
Hawke spit out a curse. “You’d better be right, cat. Seven days. Find my female alive and you’ll never have to worry about territorial threats again. If her body turns up, we go for blood.”
“For blood.”
Sascha woke to the chime of the communication console. She was collapsed in the entry of her apartment, slumped against the closed door with her legs spread out in front of her. She had no memory of anything after exiting the elevator that had brought her to this floor.
Forcing herself to her feet, she clutched the door and walls for support as she somehow made her way to the console. Nikita’s name flashed up. Too exhausted to do anything but stand there, she let her mother leave a message and then glanced at her watch.
It was ten at night. That meant she’d lost in excess of seven hours to unconsciousness. Frantic, she checked her shields. They’d held. Her relief made her aware of something else—the pain of the grief and rage that had been crushing her was gone. She couldn’t remember how she’d defused it and she didn’t want to think about it either. Didn’t want to think about anything.
A long shower took her mind off matters for a few minutes. She followed that by sitting still and trying to meditate herself into a trancelike state, unwilling to face up to what she’d learned that day. It had been one straw too many. Her brain was in danger of overloading. She did mental callisthenic after mental callisthenic.
By the time she made herself return Nikita’s call, she’d achieved a measure of outward calm. Her mother’s face flashed up on the screen. “Sascha. You got my message.”
“I’m sorry I was out of touch, Mother.” She didn’t explain where she’d been. As an adult Psy, she had the right to her own life.
“I wanted an update on the changeling situation.”
“I have nothing to report but I’m sure that’ll change.” Right now she was hanging on to her sanity by a thread and didn’t know what to believe.
“Don’t let me down, Sascha.” Nikita’s brown eyes probed her face. “Enrique isn’t happy with you—we need to give him something.”
“Why do we need to give him anything?”
Nikita paused and then nodded as if she’d decided something. “Come up to my suite.”
* * *
Ten minutes later, Sascha found herself standing beside her mother, looking out at the glimmering darkness of a city going to sleep.
“What does it remind you of?” Nikita asked.
“The PsyNet.” It was a very crude approximation.
“Weak lights. Strong lights. Flickering lights. Dead lights.” Nikita linked her hands loosely in front of her.
“Yes.” Sascha felt a slight pounding at the back of her neck, more irritating than painful. A leftover from whatever had happened this afternoon? If anything had happened. What if she’d imagined the entire psychic scenario? Perhaps it was a sign of her accelerating insanity. What proof did she have that she’d done anything other than collapse? Nothing.