Shield of Winter

by Nalini Singh

  A few steps out, he froze, then started again, froze. Again and again.

  Concerned, she spoke to Vasic without looking at him, unsettled after . . . whatever it was that had happened between them. "He's never behaved like that. Do you think he might be sensing contaminati--"

  "He's picking up the scents of the wolves and leopards who built the cabins."

  Oh. Ivy rose slightly on her toes, uplifted by the bubbles of excitement in her blood. "Will we see the changelings?" She'd never been near any big predator--discounting Vasic. He could've easily been a wolf, pure black with eyes of stunning frost.

  "Highly probable."

  Unable to resist, she turned her eyes to his profile. It was clean, pure.

  Hard.

  "The experiment can't begin until your minds have relocated to this region of the PsyNet."

  It took Ivy several seconds to wrench her thoughts back from the image that had formed in her mind between one heartbeat and the next--not of a black wolf after all, but of a warrior-priest from eons past. Strong and unwavering in the face of evil, and with a courage that defied comprehension.

  "Yes," she managed to say, stunned by the force and potency of the image. Yet, was it a true insight born of instincts of which she wasn't consciously aware, or was she seeing such qualities in Vasic because she needed to see them, needed to think of him as a protector rather than the opposite?

  "It shouldn't take long," he said into the heavy silence.

  Rubbing her hands over her arms, her sweater suddenly too thin, Ivy simply nodded. Academics attempted to claim knowledge, but no one understood all the rules of the psychic plane. Minds were usually anchored in one place by a biofeedback link, but individuals could go anywhere in the Net, even travel physically to another continent with no change in their psychic location. However, if a person wanted to reanchor, as Ivy did, the process could take as little as twenty-four hours.

  Hearing voices, she realized someone else had arrived. Curious but also a little shy, she turned to Vasic. "Shall we go meet them?"

  He walked down the single step to the ground in response, the black silk of his hair kissing his collar. It couldn't be regulation length, and she liked the fact that despite first appearances, he wasn't the perfect soldier . . . was perhaps her warrior-priest after all.

  The first meeting went well, Chang a personable cardinal not much taller than Ivy. "I'm a scientist in my ordinary life," he told her, before they parted so he could claim a cabin.

  His Arrow was far more remote.

  The others arrived in short order. Seated on her little porch only one step up from the ground, she drank a cup of tea and watched everyone settle in, while Rabbit ran around and sniffed at the newcomers, ecstatic at this adventure. Odd as it was, he didn't bristle at any other Arrow. Only Vasic.

  Either her pet's instincts were diametrically opposed to her own . . . or he was jealous. And what, Ivy thought, did that say about her own response to an Arrow who remained a black-clad stranger--one who'd taken the time to make certain her cabin was stocked with food suitable for Rabbit.

  Calling her pet back when his curiosity seemed to discomfort a small blonde who'd been the last to arrive, she promised him they'd play later. Satisfied, he drank from his water bowl, then sat panting beside her.

  As it had so many times over the past two hours, Ivy found her gaze drifting toward Vasic. He was standing in the center of the clearing talking to several other Arrows. The presence of other members of his squad did nothing to mute her fascination with him--none drew her as he did, the quiet, dangerous mystery of him quickly becoming her new addiction.

  Reaching out with her mind before she could second-guess herself, she "knocked" against his, her shoulders tensed in anticipation of a rejection. No doubt Arrows limited mental contact to those they trusted.

  Do you have a question, Ivy? His telepathic voice was as cool as his physical one.

  The hairs rose on her arms, born of a visceral reaction she couldn't define, but knew wasn't fear. What are you doing? It felt unutterably intimate to be speaking to him on the psychic level while the world moved around them, unaware of the connection.

  Discussing security protocols. Would you like the information? The data flowed into her mind on the heels of his question.

  Hmm, interesting, she said, though she couldn't make heads or tails of the complex diagrams. I'm going to explore.

  You're free to do so. The perimeter is at some distance and clearly marked.

  Rabbit rose the instant she did, his eyes bright. Smiling at him because it was impossible not to, she put her mug safely next to a porch post, then tapped her thigh, and they headed away from the cabins. "Be good," she said, though she wasn't worried her little white shadow would race too far.

  Vasic? she said again.

  Yes, Ivy?

  It was strange how quickly his mental touch had become familiar. Can you tell the changelings about Rabbit in case he accidentally breaches the perimeter?

  I've already done so. They have promised to herd him back if he does.

  A deep warmth uncurling in her abdomen, she said, Thank you.

  No response, no polite words. "Because he only says what is necessary." And, she reminded herself in an effort to fight the temptation to draw him out further, he was working. "Come on, Rabbit. Let's go find that stream we can hear."

  Tail wagging happily, Rabbit padded beside her through the sun-dappled spaces between the trees. His first winter with her, she'd tried to keep him inside, but her pet had made it clear he loved the snow. Now it was only on the coldest days that she left him snug inside their home.

  A couple of minutes of easy walking later, the two of them stood beside a stream that looked like a picture she'd once seen in a children's storybook, the water creating a quiet music as it ran over smooth pebbles as large as her palm.

  Hearing the crackle of fallen branches underfoot behind her, she turned to see Chang. "Hello."

  The distinctive night-sky eyes of a cardinal, white stars on black, focused on Rabbit. "Is that a pet?"

  "Yes." Ivy had made a decision to own her new life, no matter where it led. No lies, no half-truths. Not even from herself. "My Silence is fractured to the point of being nonexistent." And no one, she decided at that instant beside a sunlit stream, would ever make her feel lesser for it; she wouldn't permit it.

  Ivy?

  Yes, Vasic? she said in a deliberate echo of the way he'd answered her earlier . . . and it felt like the beginnings of a secret language.

  Are you at ease being alone with Chang? I saw him head in the same direction as you.

  Something twisted in her heart. Yes. Thank you for checking.

  Your safety is my priority.

  Chapter 12

  Empaths thrive in communities. Extended periods of solitude are known to be damaging to their mental well-being.

  Excerpted from The Mysterious E Designation: Empathic Gifts & Shadows by Alice Eldridge

  AN HOUR AFTER she'd met Chang by the stream, Ivy found herself seated on one of the large rocks at the open end of the clearing, the sun having warmed the stone. Around her sat the other empaths, the ten of them having gravitated toward one another.

  Three men and six women, they ranged in age and geographic localities. Chang had come in from a research station in Kenya, while the blonde woman who wasn't comfortable with Rabbit--Concetta--helped run a family business in Paraguay. Petite Lianne hailed from Kuala Lumpur, Teri from Houston, and Jaya from an atoll in the Maldives. Tibet born and raised Dechen sat next to Scottish Penn, the two of them across from Brigitte, a German based in Amsterdam. The final male, Isaiah, was from the tiny island nation of Niue.

  Chang and Brigitte, both on the cusp of forty, were the oldest. "Apparently," Chang had said to Ivy as they walked back from the stream, "anyone older is apt to find it more difficult to become active within the necessarily truncated timeline."

  That made sense to Ivy, as did the fact that there was no one youn
ger than Jaya at twenty-one. A younger empath could well be too erratic--because while Silence was a terrible cage, it also taught strict mental discipline. Ivy's conditioning might not have held, but she'd used the skills she'd learned under Silence to shield herself and to exert control in situations where betraying a fracture could've led to dangerous consequences.

  "Woof!"

  Glancing down at Rabbit, Ivy said, "Shh," but his excitement made her smile. Her pet had investigated every corner of the compound by now, sniffed at everyone--even the Arrows--but remained full of energy.

  "Your conditioning"--Isaiah's dark eyes zeroed in on her smile--"it's totally fragmented?"

  Ivy was trying very hard not to dislike the male near her own age, but there was just something so smugly superior about him that it was near impossible. Now his question sounded like an accusation--but Ivy wasn't about to apologize for who she was. "Yes." It was true enough, given that the malfunctioning lock on her abilities, the source of her nosebleeds, was scheduled to be removed tomorrow.

  It would leave her free of mental restraint for the first time in her life.

  "My Silence, too," Jaya said softly, her dark brown skin glowing in the sunlight, "is close to complete failure." The pretty young woman, tall and with a quiet elegance that belied her years, petted Rabbit when he wandered over. "I was certain I'd be forced into a deep reconditioning . . . then Councilor Krychek mandated the fall of Silence."

  "I'm here because I'm being paid to be here." Isaiah stared at the Arrows visible on the other side of the clearing, his hands clasped loosely between his knees. "I don't believe in a hidden E designation. It seems pointless."

  Ivy couldn't understand his attitude. "Did you talk to Sascha Duncan?"

  "No." Muscles worked in his jaw. "Councilor Duncan's daughter has deluded herself into thinking she has some kind of an ability when she's nothing but a flawed cardinal."

  Since Isaiah's Silence was cracking like an eggshell to anyone who had eyes, Ivy decided to leave him to his theories and directed her words to the rest of the group. "I believe." She spread the fingers of one hand over her heart, thinking of how she'd never, not once questioned her parents' love or commitment, not even during her early childhood--when Gwen and Carter had adhered more strictly to the tenets of Silence. "Looking back, I know I've sensed emotion my entire life."

  Big-boned, her hair a tumble of dark blonde, and her skin pale cream, gorgeous Brigitte spoke with a distinctive, raspy voice. "Two months before I was contacted for this," she said now, her accent that of a woman who'd lived all over Europe, "I witnessed a car accident. It was on a largely untraveled road through the Pyrenees, and I was the only one nearby to offer assistance."

  No one spoke when she paused, her throat moving.

  "After calling the authorities"--she tugged her white shawl snug around her shoulders--"I ran down the bank to where the car had come to a violent stop against a large tree, and managed to open the driver's-side door. The man inside was covered in blood and trapped by the way the car had crumpled around him." A long, deep breath, air releasing softly from her nostrils.

  "He was human, and he was so scared that it felt like nails being driven into my flesh." Vivid, brutal, the image hit hard. "When he grabbed my hand, I didn't retract it, and I thought that if only he wasn't so afraid, his heart rate would calm, his breathing would even, and he'd have a higher chance of survival."

  "What happened?" Ivy whispered when the other woman stopped to stare at the ground, as if once more alone with a dying man on a lonely mountain road.

  Cornflower blue eyes met Ivy's. "The terror, his terror . . . it drained away . . . then it was inside me, choking me with a panic that blinded." She shook her head. "I excused the experience as being brought on by the stress of the situation. But a week after the accident, the hospital forwarded me a note from the injured man." She twisted her interlinked hands. "He thanked me for being there, for taking his fear."

  A whispering quiet, the trees waving in the breeze.

  Bearded Penn was the one who broke it, his big body throwing a shadow across the ground. "I haven't had a comparable experience, but the idea of a mind healer makes rational sense to me. We're a race defined by our minds--it would be illogical not to have a designation focused on psychic injuries."

  Isaiah's biceps bulged beneath the thin fabric of his thermal pullover as he gripped his left wrist with his right hand, but even he had no words to refute Penn's statement.

  "I've felt the darkness," Concetta blurted into the quiet. "The rot in the Net."

  Everyone focused on the amber-eyed woman.

  Her skin flushed. Ducking her head, she whispered, "It's licking at the Net not far from the town where my family makes its home. I didn't go near it, but it 'tasted' malignant even from a distance." Fingers trembling, she picked at the fabric of her black pants. "How does anyone expect us to deal with such malevolence?" she asked, voice cracking on the last word. "What gives Kaleb Krychek and his pet assassins the right to force us into this?"

  Ivy bristled at the derogatory description of Vasic and the rest of the squad. "Were you coerced?"

  "I may as well have been." Lip thrust forward in a pout that made the twenty-five-year-old appear younger than Jaya, Concetta wrapped her arms around herself. "The head of my family unit ordered me to accept--the contract fee, he said, was too generous to reject."

  Ivy kept her silence during the ensuing discussion, but she was disturbed by the realization that the other Es weren't all a hundred percent committed to the success of this project.

  Her nails dug into her palm.

  Whatever Concetta and her ilk did or did not do, Ivy intended to see this through to the end. Her choice was both selfish and not--she wanted to help the innocents in the Net, but she also wanted to be more than the glued-together shards of the broken teenage girl who'd come out of the reconditioning chamber. She wanted to be the promise that had been stifled inside her for a lifetime. Good or bad, weak or strong, resilient or fragile, she needed to know who Ivy Jane was beyond the cage of Silence.

  She found herself searching for Vasic on the heels of that passionate thought.

  Four years old.

  His life must've been brutally regimented, countless choices taken from him, his cage a punishing Arrow black. Would he ever choose to step out of the dark, or would he always stand as a lethal sentinel on the border? Protecting, shielding . . . but never being part of the world.

  *

  THE secondary security sweep complete, Vasic looked to where Ivy sat with the other Es. She appeared involved in an intense discussion with Jaya, while Rabbit drowsed at her feet.

  "An idyllic image," said the man who'd just 'ported in a short distance from Vasic, his black on black suit a stark contrast to the combat uniforms worn by the squad. "If we don't consider the deadly infection they've been brought here to combat."

  Vasic had known Krychek would appear sooner or later. "Have you channeled the infection to this part of the Net?"

  "I was able to nudge it in this direction." Krychek's cardinal gaze lingered on the empaths. "At its current rate of spread, it'll take approximately twenty-four hours to intrude on this location.

  "Will we be surrounded?" He had to make certain their exit strategy remained viable.

  "No. Indications are it'll come in from one side in a creeping wave, then extrude tendrils inward."

  A safer state of affairs, relatively speaking.

  Krychek slid his hands into the pockets of his suit pants. "Are there any obvious problems?"

  "It's highly likely that Concetta Galeano's family coerced her into accepting the contract." The Arrow in charge of the female E had reported his reading of the situation to Vasic an hour ago.

  "Suggested course of action?"

  "Give her another twenty-four hours," Vasic said, noting that Ivy's hair was beginning to come loose from her ponytail. "If Ms. Galeano's mind doesn't reanchor to this region"--thus proving the depth of her reluctance--"I'll
return her to her family."

  "Should that happen, I'll pay her a quiet visit to reiterate the importance of the confidentiality clause."

  Vasic was unsurprised by the decision. The last thing Krychek wanted, or the Net needed, was a leak about this experiment. Pure Psy might be in pieces, but as evidenced by the attack on Ivy, even if the fanatical group no longer posed a threat to the Net as a whole, the last remaining Pure Psy faithful were still dangerous on an individual level.

  The more problematic and potentially lethal threat, however, came from those in the general population who were having difficulty adapting to a life beyond Silence--to them the empaths would be the enemy, a direct risk to the way of life they sought to cling to with increasing desperation.

  "Anything else I should know?"

  "No." Vasic saw Ivy glance toward him, see Kaleb Krychek at his side. Shoulders going stiff, her copper-colored gaze swung back to him. It was odd, but he could almost imagine she was concerned about him.

  Impossible.

  Then he felt her mind brush his, her telepathic touch so gentle it was unlike any he'd ever before experienced. Vasic, be careful.

  He thought he should tell her he was as capable of deadly force as Krychek, that they'd been formed in, if not the same, then analogous bloody crucibles. But now that he'd tasted Ivy's smile, now that he'd felt her psychic touch, he didn't want to see fear chill her skin again when she looked at him.

  So all he said was, I am safe, Ivy.

  And he thought perhaps if he had met her a lifetime ago, he would've been better than he was . . . but he hadn't. Now it was too late, his soul pitted and shredded, his hands instruments of death. Still, he could do one thing, he thought, his eyes dropping to the gauntlet that was an outward reminder of his inhumanity.

  He could protect her to the last beat of his heart.

  Chapter 13

  Authorization not recognized. Any further attempt at access will be met with terminal action.

  Automated security system response to Ming LeBon's final bid to reenter Arrow Central Command

  MING LEBON HAD lost the Arrows. He'd accepted that, accepted too that it had been a mistake to treat them as ordinary grunts who would come to heel at his command. The Arrows were not the least ordinary, each operative having gone through rigorous psychological testing before being inducted into the squad. The majority were also acutely intelligent.