“Sascha never knew about my involvement,” he told her. “I was a last-minute addition when Hawke realized who they were dealing with. He figured it wouldn’t hurt to have a Psy on board, especially a trained soldier. My job was to deal with any psychic offensive.”
“Hawke trusted you?”
“No.” Judd had no illusions about that. “But he knew I wouldn’t do anything, not with the kids still back in the den.” When she didn’t respond, he continued. “I’m guessing Andrew didn’t mention it because his memories of that day are confused at best. He was driven by pure anger. He might not even have seen me. I went in with the team to execute Enrique, while he and Riley peeled off to rescue you.”
She’d been held in a large soundproofed room in Enrique’s apartment, only meters from where her abductor slept. “Enrique was tired from the PsyNet battle with Sascha”—the other Psy had managed to weaken the former Councilor as well as confirm his identity as Brenna’s abductor—“but he wasn’t wiped out.”
Judd had blocked Enrique’s volley of objects as the wolves and cats swarmed in, unable to use his Tk-Cell abilities to stop Enrique’s heart because his opponent had been too good at deflecting back Tk power. But then, so was Judd. While Enrique was focusing his efforts on Judd, erroneously judging him the biggest threat, the DarkRiver leopards and SnowDancer wolves had surrounded him.
The second they were in position, Judd had thrown everything he had at the other Tk, punching a hole in Enrique’s physical shields. It was all the changelings needed. They’d torn him to pieces in a matter of minutes. Blood had sprayed the walls in a spurt of arterial red, a fitting coda to a killer’s life. In the melee, no one had realized exactly what it was they had seen Judd do, leaving the secret of his Tk abilities intact.
Brenna’s hand opened against his shirt. “You didn’t see me.”
“No.” At least he could tell her that truth.
She nodded, as if accepting his explanation. “I’m glad.”
He kissed the shell of her ear. “No more tears. Ever.”
“Sorry, honeypie, but I’m wolf. We’re temperamental—get used to it.”
“Not that one. I’ll accept darling and even baby,” he said,
feeling
something unclench in his chest at hearing her sound like herself again, “but never honeypie.”
“Babycakes?” She rubbed her face against his chest.
He took a page from Andrew’s book. “Now you’re just being mean.”
She laughed and it was the best sound he’d heard in eternity.
He was late
to the meeting with Indigo—further delayed by a call to let Riley know Brenna was alone—but he truly didn’t give a damn. The only thing he cared about was that the captured hyena had once posed a danger to Brenna—his death warrant was already signed.
Indigo was waiting outside the undamaged section of the cabin, her breath frosting the past-midnight air. “Thought you’d never get here.”
“Where is he?”
“Inside. Male from the PineWood pack—they control a tiny slice of Arizona.” The high tail of her black hair swung as she jerked her head to indicate the door. “He’s not talking. That’s why I called you. Hyenas usually crack under pressure. They’re scavengers, not predators.”
Scavengers—those who preyed on the weak and helpless. If Brenna had fallen, the hyenas would have savaged her. His eyes flicked to the windows of the wooden structure behind Indigo, his senses searching for and finding the unfamiliar mental scent of the captive. The urge to crush his skull was overpowering, bad enough for the dissonance to warn him to pull back. He listened because the captive couldn’t die. Not yet. “If they’re cowards, what’s given this one a spine?”
“He’s more scared of someone else.” Indigo’s voice was not pleased. “And people usually start praying when they see me.”
“You think it’s the Council.” They were the nightmare, the thing under the bed, the deepest darkness. And they knew how to wait. Much as a spider knows how to wait.
“Yeah—it can’t be another pack.” She rubbed her glove-less hands together. “If it were, he’d have sung like a canary by now.”
“Is he blindfolded?” If, for no reason that he could foresee right now, Judd let the man live, he could not be allowed to become a threat to the family. Of course, given that Judd knew he wasn’t rational where Brenna was concerned, the hyena’s chances of walking out alive were close to nil.
Indigo nodded. “I put it on when I heard your vehicle.”
“I’ll make him talk.”
Another nod and then Indigo led him into the cabin. The hyena sat on a chair in the center of the room, fear a damp sheen over his face. Seeing it, Judd glanced at Indigo. “You’re right.” No one that petrified would have held out for long otherwise, not with four wolves in the room—Indigo, D’Arn, Elias, and the knife thrower, Sing-Liu.
The hyena was thin with sallow skin. Black hair. A pathetic goatee in the same shade. The latter was a straggling attempt to hide a chin so weak, it was a wonder he hadn’t wet himself. His eyes were covered by a strip of dark brown fabric but Judd didn’t need to see them to know the panic skittering through the captive’s bones.
Walking to stand behind the hyena, Judd placed a single finger against his temple. “Which part of your brain do you like the least?” He didn’t need touch to work, but the theatrics helped. As did the mental push he applied, the one that must’ve felt like a slow-moving pincer around the man’s head.
The hyena gasped but didn’t speak.
“I’ll destroy the part I choose, then,” Judd said, making his voice metallically Psy. Despite his earlier thoughts about the threat to Brenna, he wasn’t enjoying this. It was simply something to be done. Predators and scavengers respected only brute strength. The changelings weren’t so different from the Psy in that regard.
The hyena’s reaction was surprising. Tears leaked out from under the blindfold. “You weren’t there!” he screamed. “You fucking weren’t there!”
Judd stopped touching the man, his telepathic abilities sensing something odd. Backing up into the shadows at the edges of the room, he began working on the psychic level, aware of the physical conversation with the section of his mind functioning on that plane.
Indigo glanced at him. At his nod, she tugged down the blindfold. “Don’t look behind you” was her first order. “We weren’t where, Kevin?” she prompted when the male didn’t speak again. “You talk or I let him do what he’s good at. I think you can guess what the result will be.”
Yes, Judd thought, threaten him with the Psy bogeyman. But he was far more interested in something else he’d found in the hyena.
Indigo growled low in her throat. “Talk. Last warning.”
“Parrish, our pack leader”—Kevin almost stumbled over his words in his effort to obey—“he said we had to do what the Psy said and they wouldn’t touch us.”
“Why?” Indigo folded her arms, looking down on the male. Judd recognized the move as a display of dominance. “Kevin, I asked you a question.”
The hyena’s swallow was audible. “Because otherwise they would wipe us out. They killed eight of our pups as a warning.”
Indigo swore, arms unfolding. “Why the hell didn’t you come to us?”
Judd knew that while the wolves wouldn’t hesitate to destroy trespassers in their territory, they’d also help a weaker changeling group against an enemy that didn’t follow the rules of engagement. One of the most important rules was: No targeting minors.
“We did!” Kevin’s scream faded off to a whimper. “You wouldn’t come.”
“Who told you we wouldn’t come?” Indigo had softened her voice and crouched down in front of Kevin. Not submission but a signal that he might come out of this alive.
Kevin took a deep, shaky breath. “Parrish. He went to Hawke and your alpha laughed in his face. Said the loss of our pups was good riddance to bad rubbish. Then the leopards said they wouldn’t help us unless the wolves did!”
This time, Indigo’s oath was considerably more blue. “That, I can tell you, is a complete lie. Hawke has a thing about pups, and the cats make their own decisions.”
Kevin reacted violently to Indigo’s statement, going so far as to make aggressive sounds in his throat. “It’s not a lie!”
“Your pack leader sold you out.” Indigo rose to her feet, rage a cold mask over her sharply defined features.
“No! He had no reason to.”
“Yeah? Try delusions of grandeur. Maybe he thinks he’s going to replace Hawke and Lucas.”
Kevin stopped struggling. The silence lasted for several long seconds. “He said that that would be our revenge—to take your place.”
“What were Parrish’s orders?” Judd asked, near certain of the answer.
Kevin’s whole body twitched, as if he’d forgotten the danger at his back. “To do what the Psy said.”
“And what did the Psy say?” Indigo prompted.
CHAPTER 30
“Weird stuff
about shields and lowering them.” He sounded confused. “They hypnotized us to fix the ones who wouldn’t.”
“Give us a minute, Kevin.” Raising his blindfold again, Indigo met Judd’s gaze. He nodded toward the door.
Outside, the lieutenant leaned against the vehicle that had brought Judd to the cabin. “Mind control?” she asked, spine rigid.
He shook his head. “More like programming. Full mind control needs to be maintained by a constant link between the controlling Psy and the victim and that link sucks power.”
Judd had never stepped over that line, but he’d been taught the technical aspects. He had no doubt that had he stayed in the Net, he would have ended up using that knowledge. Evil had a tendency to wear away at humanity. It was a truth the Ghost didn’t yet see. “If you don’t want that drain on your resources,” he continued, “you can program someone to do certain things. The downside and upside compared to mind control are both the same—the victim cannot and will not deviate from the set plan. The hyenas wouldn’t have turned back even if they’d been confronted by armed wolves.”
“This is a mess.” Indigo kicked up snow with her boot. “If they got to the hyenas, we don’t know who else they might have influenced.”
“Finding that out is your job.” Judd began walking back to the cabin. “Mine is to clean Kevin’s mind.”
“Wait!” Indigo ran to his side. “We can use him as our eyes and ears.”
He met her eyes. “No.” That was on the other side of that line between humanity and the clawing darkness that constantly whispered at the corners of his mind. “I won’t replace one kind of slavery with another.”
Indigo’s face blanched. “You make me feel like a monster.”
Judd didn’t answer, already to the door. Pushing it open, he walked inside. Kevin was in the same position as before, but his terror seemed to have whittled down to grim acceptance. He thought he was going to die.
Judd stood in front of the man. “I’m going to remove what they put in. The choices you make from then on will be your own.”
The hyena’s head snapped up, moving blindly in the direction of Judd’s voice. “You’re not going to kill me?”
“Not today.” Judd went behind the male.
Lower shields,
he said telepathically. It was the first in a long list of commands the programmers could have used. But he had no need to go any further—Kevin’s tough changeling shields disappeared as if by magic. The cruelty of whoever it was that had done this was beyond anything Judd had ever seen. They had left the changeling wide open to any Psy who knew or could guess the code words.
Once inside, Judd began to check the structure of the programming. The work was effortless—not only was he a strong telepath, he’d been trained in the very techniques that had been used on Kevin. Those skills told him that the binding was crude, done in haste. Clearly, the Council wasn’t worried about failure. Then again, why should they be? While other Psy might be able to get into Kevin’s mind, only a Psy with a very specific skill set could
undo
the original programming.
A few minutes later, he was about to reset the compromised neural pathways when he saw it. A Black Key. A tiny piece of psychic code that would kick in the second he began the reset. Kevin would die from a massive aneurysm in less than a minute.
He withdrew before carefully retracing his steps. Finally satisfied the Black Key was the single contingency, he spent ten minutes deactivating and removing it. Then he cleaned house.
Kevin.
“Yes.” The vocalization was distant—the hyena remained in the trance initiated by the code words.
Your mind is now free. As of this moment, you will not respond when asked to “lower shields.” Do you understand?
“Yes.”
Aware of the wolves looking on, bemused at what appeared to them to be a one-sided conversation, Judd checked for any further activation phrases then repeated his instruction several times to ensure comprehension before giving Kevin the order to wake with full memory of what had taken place.
The hyena immediately bent double, dry-retching. Judd looked at the nearest soldier. “Get a glass of water.”
D’Arn obeyed without looking to Indigo. When the soldier returned and went to lower Kevin’s blindfold, he glanced at Judd. Understanding, Judd stepped back into the shadows once more.
Indigo waited until the hyena was no longer shaking before asking him to tell them everything he knew.
Kevin was able to share details of three other planned attacks. To Judd’s military mind, it was obvious that the PineWood leader had made no effort to keep a lid on the details. He’d known about, and relied, on the programming to ensure silence.
“I think there might be more.” Kevin sounded broken, lost. “I’ll see if I can find out anything.”
Judd was no changeling but he understood why the hyena was so distraught. Hierarchy was important in changeling packs and that hierarchy relied on trust. What Parrish had done was obliterate Kevin’s system for understanding how the world worked. It was the same psychological trauma that had destroyed so many young children at the dawn of Silence. The transitional children—those under seven years of age at the time of the Protocol’s implementation—had been taught to devalue love, warmth, touch, everything that made them feel safe. More had died than survived.