The Kinsmen Universe

by Ilona Andrews

  “I did and they aren’t. I know the details of every assassination you have ever done. They requested sixteen of you and you did eleven, all of which were retaliations for violence done to your family. I think the risks you took with Garcia were idiotic.” He knelt by her. “I also kidnapped your father and your brothers. I would’ve tortured them if I thought they knew where you were.”

  She laughed softly, but without humor. “That is an odd way to endear yourself to me.”

  “I never claimed to be kind or virtuous. But for you, I will be.” He swept her into his arms, holding her back against his chest, wrapping her with his body. She jerked away from him, but her advantage lay in precision, not in strength, and he restrained her with laughable ease. “I love you, Meli. I didn’t love you when you were sixteen, but I love you now. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I ruined your life. But I will help you build a new one. Be with me.”

  “Let me go.”

  He growled his frustration. “You’re sentencing us both to misery. In the name of what, Meli? Haven’t you been miserable enough? Wouldn’t a more fitting punishment be sentencing me to a lifetime of making you happy?”

  “Let me go, Celino.”

  “I can’t,” he whispered and kissed her hair.

  He couldn’t force her. He couldn’t bind her to himself if she didn’t want him. His muscles tensed. He went rigid, fighting against a sharp physical need to hold her, snarled, and finally opened his arms. She rose. “I have lived with this for over a decade. You broke me, Celino. You stole my future and my family treated me like a leper. I had excised myself to escape their pity. You can’t fix it with one night of reading through my old thoughts.”

  He watched her walk away and felt his heart shatter for the second time.

  In the morning, Celino Carvanna retired.

  Celino sat on the second-story wrap-around balcony on a large lounger couch. A reader lay in his hand. A frosted glass of tea rested next to him. Below him dahlias bloomed. Two years had passed, but he still felt a sharp spike of pain when he looked at them. They reminded him of her. He forced himself to glance at them once in a while. Perhaps he had become masochistic, he wondered, raising his gaze.

  Meli stood among the flowers.

  She wore a simple sundress of vivid red. She had cut her hair. Short and layered, it framed her face in a light cloud.

  She had bypassed his guards. It didn’t surprise him.

  Meli crossed to the house and took the stairs up to the balcony. When she finally sat in a chair next to him, tucking her feet under her, and he caught a slight scent of citrus from her hair, he decided she was real.

  “I should’ve never let them do it to me,” she said. “Even at ten, I should have known better. I should’ve never dedicated myself to becoming an accessory to you.”

  “You did what any child would have done. Your parents suggested it, encouraged it, and praised you when you excelled at it. The responsibility is theirs and mine. Unfortunately, I turned out to be a self-absorbed arrogant asshole,” he said. “Both times.”

  “The Carvanna finances are suffering. They are threatening to excise you, because you refuse to rescue them from themselves.”

  He wondered how she had found out that bit of highly guarded information. “They also demand that I turn over my personal funds to the family to bail them out. They won’t excise me. They’re too attached to the possibility that I might change my mind and return from retirement.”

  She arched her eyebrows. “Will you?”

  He shook his head. “‘I’ve lost the taste for it.”

  “You lie. I’ve read the INSA file.”

  He grimaced. “It takes a special kind of worm to attempt a hostile takeover of a hospital network run by a charity. Even at my worst, I wasn’t that heartless. It was a one-time pro-bono rescue.”

  A little light danced in her eyes. “And Vinderra Wineries?”

  “They were going under and I’ve always enjoyed their wine. Alfonso was taken in by an unscrupulous accountant. It was simply a matter of professional pride.”

  “And the fact that he has six children had absolutely nothing to do with your involvement?”

  “Precisely.”

  “And the Arid Foundation account?”

  “It was a pleasant diversion. I was bored.”

  “Your family is quite serious, you know.”

  He shrugged. “I couldn’t care less.”

  They sat in silence.

  A cynical thought occurred to him. “Did my family pay you to force me from my retirement?”

  “No. I doubt I could.” She smiled at him, and Celino felt his throat close. “You enjoy being the caped crusader of the financial world entirely too much.”

  “I’ve served the family long enough. What I do now is my own affair.”

  She laughed. “That look was pure Celino. You almost never look like that anymore.”

  “You’ve been watching me?”

  She nodded and pointed to the east. “I live over there. I bought Nicola’s orchard.”

  He stared at her, incredulous. “How long ago?”

  “Six months.”

  Fury swelled in him. She had been living next to him for half a year and nobody told him about it. Marcus had to have known.

  “Why are you here?” he ground out.

  “Because I love you,” she said. “I did my best to shame myself into denying it, but I can’t. I ran half across the planet and then came back so I could live for glimpses of you at the marketplace. I’m so utterly pathetic.”

  “So why come back now?”

  “Because I know how excision feels,” she said softly. “I didn’t want you to go through it alone.”

  She moved to rise. He covered the distance between them in a fraction of a blink and swept her off her feet, crushing her to him. The scent of citrus swirled about them, the heat of her body ignited his, and he sealed her mouth with his, hungry for a taste. She threw her arms around him.

  “I’m no longer Celino Carvanna,” he said, kissing her. All that he was, all the power, respect, prestige that came with being the head of a kinsman family, he had left it all behind.

  “And I’m no longer Imelda Galdes,” she whispered, her voice a breath in his ear.

  “I fly to New Delphi every month to that damn eatery, hoping to see you there. I bought your house and I sit in your garden, like some sort of imbecile, hoping you’ll come through the door.”

  Celino tasted salt and realized she was crying. He swallowed, pressing her tighter to him. A curious feeling claimed him, a powerful lightness. He felt strong, capable, and yet impossibly content. “I love you,” he said, his voice a raspy growl. “Promise me you won’t vanish this time.”

  “I promise,” she said and kissed him back.

  SILVER SHARK

  Prologue

  In the course of space colonization, there arose a need for humans with enhanced abilities - men and women who could survive harsh conditions, who were superb warriors, gifted hunters, and brilliant scientists.

  Some enhancements were technological in nature: an array of implants with various functions. Their effect ended with the death of the person who carried them. Other improvements were biological and these enhanced capabilities persisted, lingering in the bloodline, changing and mutating into new abilities in the offspring of the original carrier. It was quickly realized that the advantage of these biological enhancements lay in their exclusivity. Thus, the biologically enhanced united and shut down all further biological modification.

  Collectively known as kinsmen, these exceptional beings gave rise to several dozen families, which now form the financial elite of the colonized planets. The kinsmen strictly control their numbers and their loyalty to their families is absolute. Like the Sicilian mafia families and feuding Corsican clans of the old planet, the kinsmen exist in constant competition with each other. It is this competition that rules the economy, begins and ends wars, and drags human civilization to greater technolog
ical and scientific progress.

  Kinsmen with the ability to telepathically attack the minds of others are called psychers.

  Chapter One

  Claire awoke early. Her grey ceiling hung like a bleak shroud above. She looked at it, trying to gather enough willpower to leave the bed.

  A digital screen flared into life on the wall, presenting her with a digital clock. A female voice with a flat, computer- generated intonation announced, "Good morning. You have thirty minutes until scheduled departure to work, Captain Shannon."

  She stared at the ceiling.

  "Twenty-nine minutes. You are now one minute behind schedule."

  "Twenty-eight minutes. You are now two..."

  "Dismissed," Claire said.

  The screen died. She sat up and pushed off the bed. Around her, the apartment offered a dreary monochromatic palette: grey walls, dark floor, paler ceiling. No splash of color interrupted the drabness.

  She walked to the window. The shutter's photosensor detected her presence, and the thick panels of grey plastic slid aside. She was on the fortieth floor. Buildings rose around her, half-a-kilometer-tall rectangular boxes, separated by deep grim canyons of narrow streets. Above the city, the smog-smothered sky sifted chemical rain. The rainwater wet the sides of the uniform skyscrapers, bleaching long drip-trails in the concrete.

  Her quarters were in the barracks of Intelligence Building 214. The apartment where she grew up with her mother was located ten blocks east. Looking out of her window, she could tell no difference between the view from her current rooms and that apartment. Even the bleach patterns seemed the same.

  If she were to leave the city, which was practically impossible, she would find a barren rocky plain. The planet of Uley had only two relatively small land masses, neither of them inviting. The Eastern Continent was colonized three hundred and twenty seven years ago by the Melko Corporation. Three years later the Brodwyn Mining Consortium landed on the Western Continent. Melko voiced their claim to the entire planet and demanded that all Brodwyn colonization efforts cease immediately. Brodwyn declined to comply.

  Both conglomerates began rapid exploitation of natural resources in an effort to achieve industrial and military superiority. Every industry on either continent was designed to serve the arms race. Forty years before she was born, the hostilities exploded into an open conflict: Melko against Brodwyn, Native against Invader.

  She was a Brodwyn retainer, an "evil invader," if the propaganda of the Melko group was to be believed. She could've just as well have been born a "greedy native" on the opposite side of the planet. It would have made absolutely no difference to her life. The war had dragged on for so long, with both sides claiming they were winning and trying to demoralize the other, that whatever personal victories she had achieved seemed completely meaningless.

  Claire stared down to the hazy street below. If she opened the window and jumped, she would fall for about ten seconds before splattering on the pavement.

  If she jumped.

  To end one's own life was the most unnatural urge, but standing there by the window, she couldn't really muster any anxiety about it. She simply didn't care one way or the other.

  "You have fifteen minutes until scheduled departure..."

  "Dismissed."

  Claire stripped and stepped into the shower. The lukewarm water washed over her. She pushed the knob all the way to HOT, but the water remained mildly warm. Heat, like all other resources, had to be conserved. They were at war.

  They had been at war for the last sixty-eight years. War everlasting.

  She stepped out of the shower, toweled off her hair, and put on her undergarments and her grey Intelligence uniform with black captain stripes on the left shoulder.

  "You have one minute until scheduled departure..."

  She stepped into the hallway. The door hissed closed behind her. She took the elevator to the seventh floor, to the mess hall. It was half full, as always, and she scanned it with her mind out of habit. People moved aside for her, an automatic privilege of rank afforded to her captain stripes painted in black. Most had inert minds. A few with a predisposition to psycher activity had thoughts that luminesced slightly, and to the right, at the usual table, four soldiers of her unit glowed. She shut down the mind vision, picked up her tray with a mound of nutrient paste on it, took her vitamin-enriched water, and went to join them.

  The psychers stood at attention at her approach.

  "At ease."

  They sat as she took her usual spot. Nobody smiled. They were at war, after all, and extreme expression of emotion was frowned on, as was bright color, loud noise, and leisure. If they did smile, someone would come up and ask, "Why are you smiling? Don't you know we're at war?"

  She didn't examine their minds out of courtesy but she'd learned to read their faces, and she noted the small signs of relaxation: the softening of Nicholas' lips; the way Masha held her spoon, picking at the paste; Dwight's easy pose; Liz's nails, sheathed in transparent coating... manicured nails. Something new.

  "Good morning, Captain," Liz murmured. Slight, with thin blond hair cut short, she seemed washed out, her skin nearly transparent, her hair almost colorless.

  Claire envied her. Of the five of them, Liz was the youngest, barely seventeen. She still had some impulse, some spark of life. She'd joined the unit last year, and since then keeping her alive during the missions had proven to be a full-time job. It was a job the rest of them shared, but Claire shouldered the lion's share of it.

  Liz's brain activity spiked, her thought tentatively brushing against Claire's mind. Claire accepted the communication, opening the link between them.

  "I was wondering if I could get a plant," Liz said. "For my room. I was wondering if you knew where I could get one."

  "It will be confiscated," Claire responded.

  "Why?"

  "Because a plant requires nutrients, light, and water. It will be tagged as inappropriate expenditure of resources."

  The younger woman recoiled.

  "I'm sorry," Claire told her aloud.

  Liz ducked her head. "Thank you, Captain."

  A vague feeling of alarm tugged on Claire. The other psychers sensed it as well and the five of them turned in unison toward the incoming threat.

  Major Courtney Rome was making his way through the mess hall toward them. His psych-blocker implant was on, smudging his mind. Smudging but not obscuring. No psych blocker could lock out a psycher of her level completely.

  Her team's minds dimmed around her, as her soldiers snapped their mental shields in place. Courtney couldn't read their minds: they simply reacted to a perceived threat on instinct.

  Courtney halted a few feet from them. She liked calling him by his first name in her mind. If he ever found out, he would take it as an insult, which it was. Trim and middle-aged, Courtney wore a flat expression. She looked past the blocker into his brain and saw anxiety churning. He came to deliver unpleasant news. He never brought any other kind.

  She rose and the rest of her team stood up.

  "Captain Shannon, join me for a private consultation."

  She followed him to one of the booths lining the wall. They sat. A transparent disruptor wall slid from the slit in the wall, sealing the booth from the rest of the dining hall with a sound-proof translucent barrier.

  "Your latest psychological evaluation showed abnormalities." Courtney said. "We are no longer confident that you are giving your all to the war effort."

  "Has my performance been lacking?" she asked.

  "No. Your performance is exemplary. That's why we're having this conversation."

  Claire saw it in his mind: Courtney believed she should be decommissioned, but she was too valuable. Kinsmen like her, with psychic power, came along about one in every six million, and the decision to keep her breathing was made above his pay grade. She could crush his mind like a bug, psych blocker or no.

  Claire leaned back, putting one leg over another. "When we're done here," she s
aid, not sure what possessed her to continue speaking, "you will return to your office where you will read reports and push pseudo paper. It's your job. I will go to my job, where I'll have to murder people."

  Courtney studied her. "They are the enemy."

  "These people I kill, they have children, loved ones, parents. Each of them exists within a network of human emotion. They love, they are loved, they worry. When I sear their minds, all of that ends. They have no choice about engaging in a fight with me, just as I have no choice in being here. For doing this, I am praised and rewarded."

  "Your point?"

  "There is something wrong with a system that glorifies a person for the killing of other human beings."

  "They will kill you if you don't kill them first. They won't hesitate."

  She sighed. "What are we fighting for, Major?"

  "We're fighting for the control of the planet. The winner will get to keep Uley, of course."

  "Have you looked outside, Major? I mean really looked? Keeping Uley isn't a victory; it's a punishment."

  Courtney leaned on the table. "I've been doing this a long time, Captain. You are not the first to crack-you won't be the last. Not everyone has the resolve to keep up the fight. But you can be sure that when your time comes, you won't simply be decommissioned. If I were you, I'd keep it together as long as possible, because I am always watching and when you stumble, I will be there."

  She had gone too far to care about a threat. "I was taken from my mother when I was fourteen years old," she told him. "She was sick when I left. I wasn't allowed to look after her. The Building Association had to take care of her."

  "That's what the Building Associations are for," Courtney said. "They're there to shoulder the responsibility for the residents of the building, so people like us can fight. Everyone must do their part."

  "My mother died when I was twenty-two. In those eight years I was permitted to see her three times. There is a child sitting at the psycher table now, Major. She was taken away from her family when she was twelve. It's getting worse. When will it end?"