“Everyone gets that way.” Talin wondered what it was like to grow up without emotion. She couldn’t imagine ever not loving Clay.
Faith’s night-sky eyes seemed to turn darker. “Clay scared me when I first came into DarkRiver, but then he became my friend. So when you—”
“It’s okay,” Talin interrupted. “You were worried I was bad for him, so you went overprotective. The truth is,” she admitted, “now that I’m not blinded by stupid jealousy, I’m glad for the tenderness you tried to give him. That’s nothing to apologize for.”
“Yes, there is.” Faith’s expression was resolute. “Sascha and Tammy were so nice to me when I entered DarkRiver. I should’ve remembered their example and treated you with the same warmth and respect.”
“I figure we’re even.” Talin filled her voice with sincerity—so that Faith didn’t have to guess at nuances of emotion. “I called you all sorts of names in my head.”
Faith gave a small smile. “We’re okay?”
And the words came out. “You tell me.”
“Sometimes,” Faith said, her voice holding a crystal clarity that was almost painful in its beauty, “it’s better not to know what the future brings. If I had known about Vaughn, I might’ve run and missed out on the best thing in my life.”
“I doubt you would’ve gotten very far.” DarkRiver men were nothing if not determined.
“Some things are set in stone.” Faith’s smile grew. “Like you and Clay.”
Talin felt her stomach fill with butterflies. “You sound very certain of that.”
“We, all of us who are mated, we’re learning and growing into our bond, but you and Clay—it’s like the bond’s been there forever, it’s so solid, so true.” The foreseer shook her head and pushed through into the kitchen. “You have the bond of a couple that’s already been together for decades.”
A pungent mix of shock and panic dried out Talin’s mouth. The way Faith was speaking, it was as if she could see the bond—if true, that meant Talin and Clay had truly mated. But that was a question she would ask only Clay. “So,” she said, forcing down her disquiet, “what are we going to do tonight?” She had to do something or she’d go insane.
Tammy shot her a mischievous look. “Well, we know you had to clear out of your apartment in a hurry and that you probably didn’t take much time to pack, so we did some shopping for you.”
“Except,” Faith added with a smile, “Sascha got lost in the lingerie department.”
Tammy laughed. “Don’t worry. We got you at least two non-X-rated pieces. Including this.” She held up a beautiful green sweater, the one she’d begun knitting the night Talin had first traded barbed remarks with Faith. “It was always for you.”
Talin felt off center, lost. “Why?” She didn’t have friends, didn’t know how to give that much of herself to anyone but Clay.
“Because,” Sascha said from behind her, “you’re one of us. And DarkRiver looks after its own.”
Clay figured that
if this Larsen bastard planned to hit Talin, he’d start off at either the last spot where she’d been seen or Max’s hospital room. He and Dorian eliminated the latter option by getting Max discharged.
The cop thanked them for it. “I thought I’d never get out,” he said as they helped him to the car. He wasn’t so pleased when they took him to a small and very private changeling hospital, used only by wolves and, now, the cats. “What the fuck?”
“Tally likes you,” Clay told him. “Shut the hell up and get better so she doesn’t worry.”
Max grimaced. “How long am I going to be stuck here?”
“Doc said you’ll be out end of the week if you do what you’re supposed to.”
That made Max happier. “I’ll be a boy scout. Happy hunting.”
Clay didn’t ask how the man knew they were hunting. “Thanks. We’ll give you an update afterward.”
“At least I got one of the fuckers.” Yawning, Max dropped off.
That done, they got into the car and checked in with Lucas, who was keeping an eye on Talin’s apartment.
“No movement,” Lucas told them. “Rina’s come and gone. Did a pretty good impression of Talin. Went in, turned the lights on and off, opened and closed the closets, played the recording you made of Talin muttering, then snuck out the back. Oh, yeah, she took the initiative and faked having a shower, too.”
Clay hoped that that would be enough to draw out the kidnappers—earlier today, while Tally had been busy with Jon and Noor, he’d come in and confirmed that the apartment was being monitored. There were at least ten bugs inside.
He and Dorian arrived at the meeting spot across from the apartment building as the clock was ticking one in the morning. They weren’t the only ones. “You really think this’ll work?”
Judd asked from the shadows. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re just hoping the person behind this will turn up here once his surveillance tells him Talin has surfaced.”
“We’re going on instinct,” Clay said, unsurprised the SnowDancer lieutenant had accepted his invitation. Judd was proving a good man to have at his back, though Clay had had to threaten to kick his ass after the way he’d spoken to Tally. “The bastard has to start somewhere and this is Tally’s last known location. Thanks to Rina, we might even have fooled Larsen into thinking she’s moved back in.”
They all went silent. Minutes turned into tens of minutes. Nothing stirred.
“If it was me,” Judd said, “I’d go for Max—far easier to get Talin’s location by breaking him.”
“Max is no longer accessible,” Dorian muttered, smug.
Judd didn’t say anything for another ten minutes. “It would still be inexcusably stupid to come here. He should go to Shine and torture Devraj Santos.”
“Jesus.” Lucas’s scowl was in his tone.
“Logic says,” Judd continued, unperturbed, “he’ll go to those likely to know Talin’s location, not run to this place she hasn’t been to in days. He won’t fall for the Rina gambit.”
“You’re thinking with the trained mind of a soldier,” Dorian said. “Larsen isn’t a soldier, he’s a scientist playing at murder. He was smart at the start, I’ll give you that, but the recent slipups all smack of an amateur overreaching himself—the failed attack on Max, the way the bodies were dumped, even the mess he or his goons made of Talin’s apartment.”
“Psychological warfare.”
“No.” Clay shook his head. “I had a look today. What they did was savage, like bullies trying to scare a child.” Losing those pictures had to have hurt Tally. Clay intended to replace each and every one. “There was a senselessness to the whole thing.”
Lucas’s anger was a naked blade when he spoke. “You’re thinking we have ourselves a sociopath using experiments as cover to prey on children?”
“Yeah.” That was what he had never been able to understand—and what had probably confused Tamsyn—about the photos of those fragile, broken bodies. There had been too much glee in the way the victims had been brutalized. Someone
had hurt those children simply because he could. “Worse, I think he’s slipped the leash—no one in the Council superstructure would’ve okayed anything but the total disappearance of the victims. Larsen wanted them found because he wanted the attention.”
“If that’s true,” Dorian added, “it means things are seriously shaky in the PsyNet.”
“Because they’ve had too many mistakes escape lately?” Lucas asked.
“Think about it. Before Enrique”—Dorian’s tone was a chilling frost as he named his sister’s killer—“we hadn’t heard of any violence in the Psy. But after him, we had that serial who was hunting Faith and now this.”
At the time that Faith was being stalked, Clay had been so close to going rogue, he’d suggested leaving the Psy to clean up their own mistakes. He hadn’t cared about anything. Now, God, how he cared about Tally. She could drive him crazier faster than any other person, he thought with a smile, but when she melted, she was pure honey.
“There have been other incidents.” Judd’s comment cut into his thoughts. “Killers they’ve managed to hush up, others who have become more active.”
“Why the sudden signs of disintegration?” Lucas asked. “The assassination can’t be the cause—it only just happened.”
“Dissent is building up, starting to have a flow-on effect—the PsyNet is a psychic construct. Anything that happens in it has an impact on the minds of those linked to it.”
“You saying the more the PsyNet destabilizes, the more vermin we’re going to see?” Dorian blew out a disgusted breath.
“Yes. Notwithstanding its own murderous tendencies, the Council’s iron fist—in conjunction with Silence—kept the majority of the viciously insane contained.” He paused. “There’s always a price for freedom.”
Lucas swore. “If the Council falls, the backlash will hit humans and changelings as well as the Psy.”
“The greatest danger lies in the uncontrolled dismantling of Silence. In the chaos, we could lose millions from all three races.”
“You’re defending Silence?” Dorian’s asked in open surprise.
“Silence was set
up for a reason. I’d be dead now if not for it.” Judd’s tone was matter-of-fact. “It’s ultimately proven false, but we can’t go back to how things were before conditioning began—the killing, the insanity.” His fists clenched.
“How bad will it get?” Clay asked.
“Measures are being put in place,” Judd said, “but the fallout will be … substantial. Not only deaths from the psychic shock, but from the awakening of a thousand monstrous desires, things that were suppressed by Silence. Like this scientist—before the cracks in the Net, he would have never acted on his instincts.”
Clay bared his teeth. “Means the sociopathic bastard’s not thinking clearly anymore.” Psy made excellent serial killers because they rarely made mistakes. But if this one was fragmenting … “He’ll come here, he’ll want to hurt the woman who stopped his fun.”
“What if he and his associates don’t turn up tonight?” Judd asked. “Do we return tomorrow? And the day after?”
“Yes.” Clay looked at the Psy. “You have a problem with that?”
Judd smiled and it was the ice-cold smile of the assassin he undoubtedly was. “No. I like kids.”
“How do we do this?” Dorian asked. “Get Judd to tear into the head guy’s mind?”
“No,” Clay said at once.
He
was going to do this, make sure Talin was safe. “Judd can’t risk being made.”
“I can hide very well,” Judd responded. “But we also have to consider the fact that if I go into Larsen’s mind, there’s a high probability I’ll destroy everything he knows. I won’t have time to fine-tune the intrusion.”
Clay’s beast growled inwardly at Judd’s reference to the Psy ability to kill with a single focused mental strike. “Psy can’t strike at us if they’re unconscious, correct?”
“Yes. That is,” he amended, “if they’re strong enough to take you out in the first place. Not every Psy is. Anything below a Gradient 5, you’d survive.”
“Same problem,” Lucas pointed out. “He loses consciousness, we lose the chance to extract information.”
“I put some of our own bugs in the apartment when I checked it out earlier,” Clay told them. “Switch your earpieces to frequency two.”
“And here I thought you didn’t listen when I talked about the tech stuff.” Despite the lighthearted words, Dorian’s amazement was evident. “So, we listen, let Larsen and his buddies tell us what we need to know. Might work unless they choose to telepath. Telepaths, hell—Judd, they going to be able to pick us up?”
“I don’t think this Larsen is smart enough to run a telepathic scan. But if he does, we’ll be fine as long as we’re not too close. Most Psy only have the ability to scan a few meters in any direction.”
“We need to be close enough to intercept when necessary.” Clay scanned the area with a predator’s cool mind. “One covering the back of the building, one the front, two on either side.”
“Dorian—you’re the sniper,” Lucas said. “Get up high, set up your rifle, and aim it at the window of Talin’s apartment. If we need a shot, we’ll let you know.”
Dorian was already moving.
Lucas touched his earpiece a few minutes later. “He has a sightline into the window.”
The three of them moved out toward the building, one Psy
assassin and two leopards who knew how to turn to shadows in the dark.
“I’m in position.” Lucas’s calm voice.
“So am I.” Judd.
“Copy.” Clay’s mind was working with near-Psy efficiency by then, his emotions contained until he needed their violent force. He was certain he would tonight.
Because he had no doubts whatsoever that the monster would come.
The animal had scented something in the wind, tasted something in the bruises Jon bore. The man who had preyed on the boy wouldn’t be thinking straight right now. He’d want his plaything back. And the easiest way to get to Jon was through the only person he trusted.
Tally.
Larsen probably planned to torture her, break her. But evil, he thought with a fierce stab of pride, didn’t understand good. Tally would rather die than betray those under her care. Just like twenty years ago, she had gone mute rather than betray him.
Don’t kill me! I promise I won’t touch her again!
Orrin had begged for his life, promised to turn himself in after the first slash of Clay’s leopard claws. Clay had executed him anyway. For the pain he had put in Tally’s eyes, for the childhood he had stolen, Orrin Henderson had deserved to die. But to the authorities, Orrin’s words would have changed Clay’s act from manslaughter in defense of a child, to cold-blooded retaliation.
They would have been wrong.
Clay had stopped thinking straight the second he’d heard that first, faint cry, the utter despair in it a violation. As Orrin broke Tally, something in Clay had broken, too. He could have no more stopped himself from killing Orrin than he could have left Tally to take the hurt. Part of him wondered if, deep down, she still blamed him. His leopard’s heart remained deeply scarred by the failure.
Without warning, warmth soothed into his bones, a silent whisper telling him the past was over and done. What they were now was the truth. He accepted that whisper, accepted it was Tally speaking to him, though she might not know it yet. He
understood full well that she thought they weren’t truly mated. He hadn’t done anything to correct her misapprehension—with the shadow of disease hovering over her, she didn’t want to bond him to her in such an inescapable fashion, didn’t want to handicap him.