With a human man, she might have continued to argue that he had no right to judge her. But the truth was, it wasn’t about judgment. And Clay wasn’t human, his changeling blood was too strong. For him, it was about fidelity, about loyalty. It didn’t matter that they had been children when he killed Orrin to keep her safe—they had already belonged to each other. Until she had cut their link. Now the past was an unacknowledged third between them, pouring a corrosive acid on the love they had managed to salvage.
He kissed her.
Enough
, she thought, banishing the ugly thoughts to a far corner of her mind. She was with Clay; that was what mattered. Finally, for the first time in two decades, she was almost whole.
She and Clay
arrived at the meeting point—a small cabin on DarkRiver land—at almost exactly the same time as the SnowDancer. Judd Lauren was the coldest man she had ever seen. Dressed in a black T-shirt and black jeans, his eyes measured her with icy precision. She’d have run very fast in the opposite direction had Clay not been beside her. And had Judd not been holding the hand of a small blonde with amazing eyes of brown shot with blue, and the brightest smile Talin had ever seen.
“Judd’s mate, Brenna,” Clay said, lips brushing her ear.
Brenna’s expression shifted to pure astonishment. “Good Lord, the rumors are true—Clay actually talks to you.”
Talin couldn’t help it, she burst out laughing despite the painful thoughts swirling in her head. “Does he?” She gestured at Judd.
“If I’m
very
good, he sometimes says two whole sentences in a row.”
Talin was about to reply when Clay clamped a hand over her mouth from behind—at the same time that Judd wrapped an arm around Brenna’s neck. “Before they start comparing other things,” he said to Clay, “let’s talk.” Taking Brenna with
him, he walked up the steps and grabbed a chair, while Brenna curled up on the swing.
Following the other couple onto the porch, Clay chose to lean against the railing. Talin stayed attached to his side, all amusement gone. Judd wouldn’t have asked them to sit unless he had something to tell them, which meant Dev was probably right—the Psy were kidnapping the children … doing things to Jon she might not be able to erase.
“You trust her?” Judd asked, cold gaze fixed on Talin.
The blunt question froze her in place. She told herself not to hope, not to wish for the impossible. Yet, when Clay replied, she felt as if he’d flayed the skin off her flesh. “Tally’s mine.” Possession, not an affirmation of trust.
But it seemed to satisfy Judd. “Are you aware that Silence functions by conditioning young Psy not to feel?” he asked her.
She scrambled to regather her shattered resources. “Yes. Clay explained.”
“The process no longer works well enough for the Psy Council,” he responded.
Sliding a hand behind Clay’s back, Talin held on to him as Judd continued speaking. Clay’s arm—already around her shoulders—tightened.
“Because of the number of people who aren’t taking to, or who are breaking, Silence,” Judd continued, his voice getting ever more arctic, his eyes shifting to killing black, “the Council has initiated the beginnings of an Implant Protocol.”
As Talin watched, Brenna reached out to curl her hand around Judd’s upper arm. Though he didn’t seem to notice the touch, when he next spoke, his voice was less inhuman. “They want to put implants in children’s brains to ensure full implementation of Silence. The chips will turn the PsyNet—currently composed of individuals—into a hive mind, with the Councilors as the controlling entities.”
“Don’t they see that it’ll kill the Psy?” Talin asked, horrified at the idea of cutting into developing brains. “It’ll destroy innovation, bury brilliance for the sake of conformity.”
Judd’s classically handsome face burned with deep anger. “The Council sees power. That’s the only thing that matters to them.”
“What’s the connection to the kidnappings?” Clay asked.
“Until a few months ago, the Implant lab was located in this state. But after it was sabotaged and the research destroyed, the Council moved its activities to a hidden location.”
Talin felt her hand turn into a claw against Clay’s chest. “You’re saying the kids are being taken to this hidden lab?”
“I’m guessing,” Judd corrected. “They could have other facilities. But this one is isolated enough to provide the perfect base of operations.”
Clay put his hand over hers. “Any way to find out for sure?”
“My contact was able to confirm Psy involvement, but nothing further.”
“Do you believe him?”
Judd shrugged. “He’s loyal to the Psy race, so he won’t betray them. But he considers the Implant Protocol the worse evil. I pointed out that there is a possibility the kidnapped children are being used as test subjects.”
Talin choked back her rising terror. “Do you really believe that?”
“I can’t see the worth of using non-Psy organs to test such a sensitive implant.” He paused. “However, things are chaotic in the Net at present. The Council’s attention is scattered. It may be losing control over some of those it previously contained.”
Brenna’s expression grew solemn. “The monsters are starting to escape.”
“That could explain why we’re finding bodies at all—if the Council was running this, they wouldn’t have left a trail,” Clay said, as Judd picked up his mate’s hand and pressed a kiss to her palm. “Is there any way to infiltrate this lab and verify whether or not it is the base of operations?”
“That,” Judd said, continuing to keep Brenna’s hand in his, “is the issue. If I give you the location of the lab and you go in openly, it may blow my contact’s cover. Only a select few have access to that data.”
“But if we could save Jon—and others they haven’t yet taken—wouldn’t it be worth it?” Talin asked, angry at the SnowDancer male for being so damn uninvolved.
Then she saw the quiet fury in his gaze and realized her mistake. “If my contact is unmasked and the Council shifts
the lab again, we might not be able to stop the Implant Protocol. It’ll affect hundreds of thousands. I’m not asking you to make a choice between this boy and the Psy children who will be implanted. I’m telling you there is no easy answer.”
With those words, he turned black and white into gray, left her grappling with a moral dilemma that appeared to have no solution. “I don’t suppose we could sneak in?”
“It’s located in the middle of cornfields deep in Nebraska, open visibility in every direction.”
Clay found himself thinking of the story Tally had told him about her secret caves. “What about underground? There has to be some system to bring in supplies—even if it’s just replacement medical equipment. It can’t be a hermetically sealed environment.” He also knew that if the children
were
being taken to this facility, the Psy would need to have a system in place to transport the bodies out. But he kept his silence. Tally’s heart was already breaking—she didn’t need to hear that.
Judd’s expression shifted, became thoughtful. “They could be teleporting in everything, but I’d say that’s unlikely. Teleporters are thin on the ground—the Council would never waste them on such menial tasks.”
“And,” Brenna murmured, “they can’t be trucking or flying things in. The traffic would give away the location.”
“There has to be a hidden access point.” Animal instinct told Clay he was right.
“Pity we don’t have a teleporter ourselves,” Talin muttered.
“Wouldn’t help,” Judd told her. “They need an image of where they’re going, particularly when buildings are involved. Otherwise, they could end up inside a wall or stuck halfway through a ceiling. Organs sliced in half, instant death.”
Talin shivered.
“There’s one other thing,” Clay said. “A witness saw Jon disappear off the street. Any way to explain that if we work on the theory that this isn’t a teleporter?”
“They probably threw out a wave of telepathic interference. It would’ve blocked any humans from ‘seeing’ the snatch. Sloppy work if your wit was aware Jon had disappeared—either that or the wit was changeling.”
Clay made a note to check up on that. If one of the Rats
had fathered a child, he could understand their protectiveness in hiding the kid, but DarkRiver needed to know. “What’s the closest safe insertion point to the lab?”
“Cinnamon Springs—only town within any reasonable distance.”
“We’ll fly there tomorrow, check it out,” Clay said.
Judd reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a data crystal. “The exact location. Keep it on an absolute need-to-know basis. One slip and they’ll move the lab. If you want me to go in with you, call. Otherwise, everything I know is on that crystal.”
“There has to be a way in,” Brenna murmured. “Sorry, darling, but Psy often don’t think about us animals.”
“Even Psy learn,” her mate responded with an amused smile that was so unexpected, Talin’s mouth fell open. “They’re wary of cats and wolves now. There’s a high probability the area’s been seeded with sensors calibrated to pick them up.”
Clay stirred. “Yeah, but what about snakes? Snakes can hide in corn and, in animal form, they’re unique enough that the sensors shouldn’t go off.”
“You know a snake? Oh!” She suddenly remembered his story about a changeling with shimmering black scales. “Do you think your friend will help us?”
“I’ll ask.” Clay nodded at Judd. “Best-case scenario—we go in without setting off alarms, kids are there, we get them out.” A pause. “High-tech security like that—I’m not sure we can maintain your secret.”
“If you think it’s going to turn to shit, warn me. I need to alert my contact.”
Talin met the Psy man’s cold gaze. “Why?” They could be undoing everything he had worked to achieve, but he hadn’t flinched.
“Sometimes,” he said, “you have to save the innocents you see in front of you and worry about the ones to come later.”
At that instant, Talin realized that who Judd seemed was not who he was. She was about to thank him when her brain suddenly presented her with the answer to a question she hadn’t been conscious of considering. “You know, I was always good at puzzles.”
Everyone looked at her.
“How do we get information from inside a locked room without opening the door? We have someone send it to us, of course.”
Judd shook his head. “The lab is under a blackout. No PsyNet access.”
“What about the Internet? Telepaths tend to ignore it, but it works just fine.” Brenna sat up straighter. “Judd, baby, do you have a link on the inside?”
“We have suspicions that a certain scientist may be open to being turned but no proof.”
“You able to put out some feelers?” Clay asked.
A sharp nod. “I don’t know how much good it’ll do. My contact is … not
good
as you would think of it. He’s not evil, either, but he won’t do anything unless it complies with his personal code. That code involves a deep loyalty to his race. However, since he passed on the information about the kidnappings, he may be willing.”
Talin hoped with all her heart that the humanity within this unknown Psy was stronger than the Silence.
Jonquil opened his
eyes and for a horrifying second, thought he was blind. His lungs grew tight as he fought the screaming urge to panic.
Then cool fingers touched his forehead. “Lie still.”
“You.” Relief turned his limbs to water. “What’s wrong with me?”
“Your eyelids are grossly swollen.” She touched them and even that feather-light brush caused excruciating pain. “I apologize. I was applying a salve—give it a few minutes and the swelling will reduce to a negligible level.”
He trusted her. She was the only adult in this place who hadn’t tortured him. “What did they do to me?”
“I’m not certain, but I believe they were testing a new compound that’s purportedly meant to help with the integration of an implant.”
He didn’t understand most of that, but he caught the idea. “They poisoned me?”
“That wasn’t the point, but let’s say it’s a good thing for you that their science was flawed. Had it not been, you’d be dead now.”
He was used to listening for nuances in people’s voices.
However, Blue … she was beautiful, with her smooth skin and wolf eyes, but her voice was utterly toneless. So he made a guess. “Did you help that flaw along?”
A small silence. “You’re highly intelligent. Yes. It was to my advantage that their experiment failed.”
“Why?”
“I need you alive.” She touched his face, then his neck. “Why do you have so much bruising? It should have been a simple injection.”
He could make out some light now. Relieved that she’d been telling the truth about his eyes, he answered almost absentmindedly. “I think I might’ve tried to hit them while I was out of it.”
“That explains Larsen’s black eye.”
Fear clawed through him. “The little girl—did that guy hurt her? He said they wouldn’t if I cooperated.”
“He lied,” she responded, cold as the chill of these antiseptic walls. “Nothing you can do will stop him. But the girl is safe for now. He’s having some trouble getting new subjects so he’s taking care with the single undamaged one he already has.”
“Trouble?” He began to smile. “Talin. Talin did something.” He’d nicknamed her the Lioness after seeing her hair. It had been meant to be a joke because she was so little, but it had turned out to be perfect—she never gave up. “She told me she’d fight for me.”
Blue’s face was now a fuzzy shape above him. “Who is Talin?”
He realized he’d been led into a trap. “No one.” “It’s in your best interest to tell me. You’re a bargaining chip. I need to know with whom to negotiate.”
He refused to open his mouth. He had already been enough of an idiot. If Talin was trying to help him, he wouldn’t give her away to the enemies. He’d seen enough of life to know that, sometimes, evil wore a sweet face. “Thank you for the eye balm.” Everything hurt, but he forced himself into a sitting position against the wall.
She was dressed like before, but she had pulled down her mask to uncover her lips. No laugh lines marked the corners. “Swallow this.” She gave him a pill. “It’ll capture the last of the poison and you’ll expel it during normal bodily processes.”