Sometimes, Tally could be very stupid for a smart woman.
She was his life, his soul. Without her, he would have gone rogue sooner rather than later. Faith had said that to him, once. That he was on the thinnest of edges and that his time would come. Now, Clay felt blood fury roar through him, inciting the urge to maim, to tear, to annihilate this creature who had dared threaten Tally … and knew that what Faith had foretold had come to pass. Today would decide his future, tell him whether he could be the mate Tally deserved.
“They’re coming.” Dorian’s voice. “Unable to confirm if male is the one described by Jon. Female is blonde, possible match to description of Ashaya’s assistant.”
Clay buried his emotions, knowing he had to act as a man tonight, not a ravaging beast. A second later, he felt his nostrils flare as the night air brought him the sharp metallic stink of Psy. Not all of the race had that scent—Vaughn’s theory was that it only marked those who had accepted Silence on the most fundamental level. The ones who retained some spark of humanity, they smelled human, normal.
Clay could smell the female, too, but couldn’t tell if the sharp metallic scent was her own or an overwhelming echo of the male’s. The leopard didn’t particularly like hurting women, but he had been in this cold war with the Psy long enough to know that female hearts and minds could carry as much evil as male—Nikita Duncan, Sascha’s mother, would’ve had no compunction in ordering the extermination of her own daughter if she’d thought she could get away with it. But knowing that didn’t make him any less uncomfortable with the idea.
“I can see them in Tally’s room. No lights.” Dorian again.
Clay frowned. “That’s Talin to you, Boy Genius.”
Dorian’s growl was low. “Ice-fucking-cold water.”
They went silent as their earpieces picked up the sound of floorboards squeaking. Neither intruder had spoken yet. If they remained silent, interrogation might have to give way to a
simple execution, Clay thought with cold logic. Once his identity was confirmed, Larsen had to die, no ifs, no buts.
“Should I pull the curtains over this window?” a female voice asked.
Damn! Clay could’ve kicked himself for leaving those curtains up there. One pull and Dorian’s line of sight was gone.
“Leave it,” the male said. “We can’t risk some nosy neighbor catching the movement and becoming suspicious.”
“As you say. What should I look for?”
“Do you have no initiative?” The man’s voice was pure Psy, but there was an ugly undertone to it the animal in Clay understood all too well. Safe behind the shield of Silence, this monster enjoyed abusing and bullying those weaker than himself. “Look for any signs of where Talin McKade might have gone after she left this apartment. She was here a few hours ago—there should be some evidence of her presence.”
“This seems an illogical endeavor,” the woman persisted. “Have you checked the detective’s records?”
“Why do you think we wasted our time going to that motel in Sacramento? He had it listed as her place of residence.”
Good on Max, Clay thought with a savage grin.
Something crunched and he realized one of the two Psy had stepped on the broken holo-frames scattered in Tally’s living room.
“Careful,” the male hissed. “We don’t want someone calling Enforcement.”
“I thought you had Councilor LeBon’s support. Surely he can stifle any Enforcement action.”
A pause. “It seems Ashaya has used my absence to convince him that my results are worthless. I need Jonquil Duchslaya to prove her wrong—and Talin McKade is certain to know his present whereabouts. The human will serve the dual purpose of providing me with a new access point into Shine’s databases.”
“You think Councilor LeBon will allow you to continue your experiments?”
“Yes, of course, once I’m able to return and show him the real results.”
“Why continue?”
“Are you questioning my judgment?”
“Your findings indicate beyond any doubt that the brains of
the Forgotten are different from ours. They can’t be utilized as test subjects.”
“It’s not about using them as test subjects.” The man’s voice held a superior tone, as if he was deigning to share a secret. “It’s about finding out what they’ve become, eliminating the possible threat to the Psy.”
“That’s an illogical presumption,” the female said. “They are no threat, their powers have mutated, weakened—”
“Mutated but not necessarily weakened.” Shuffling, rustling sounds that Clay identified as that of paper. “Where is she hiding? According to our research, she hasn’t returned to her adopted family and she has no close friends.”
“Your approach makes little sense.” The woman stood her ground, a point in her favor—if she really was loyal to Ashaya, she’d walk out of this alive. “Talin McKade isn’t high enough up in Shine to give us the information we need.”
“She has access to their computers. That’s all we need. Once we break open her natural shields and implant a control link, we can direct her to search for what we want. The situation will be more draining on your powers than if she was a cooperative subject, but it’ll work.”
“My powers?”
“I need to be fully functional for the experiments.”
Silence and then the sounds of the female finally moving about. Ten minutes later, the pair left the apartment.
“Dorian?”
“I’ve got them,” Dorian said, tone cool and focused. “They just passed the seventh-floor window, took the stairs.”
“Figures,” Lucas murmured. “They wouldn’t want to be captured on the elevator surveillance.”
They were all moving into intercept positions as they spoke.
“Luc,” Clay said, “can you get the girl away from the male?”
“Dorian, split them up,” Lucas ordered.
“They’re at the exit,” Dorian noted. “Shot coming up. Silenced.”
A short feminine scream followed soon afterward and then the sound of someone running away from Clay’s location, heavier male steps in pursuit. Lucas had taken the girl.
“Judd—we need to find out what she knows,” Clay said as Larsen ran past the alley where he stood cloaked in shadow.
“I’m on it.”
Satisfied the two men would control the female, Clay went after the monster who had killed so many children. In a test of physical strength and speed, a changeling would always win over a Psy. He caught up within seconds, close enough to verify that the Psy fit the description Jon had given them.
“Judd—chances he’s sending telepathically?” he asked as he tracked the man out of the residential streets and toward a quieter area full of warehouses closed up for the night. Fog curled up around his feet, muddied the air, but the leopard had excellent vision and a nose trained to track prey.
“If we’re lucky, he might be too agitated to send. That won’t last.”
“Did he see Lucas?”
“No.” Judd sounded as if he was running. “I’m blocking the girl, but she’s too exhausted to try to send anyway. We’re about to run her to ground.”
The link went silent.
Clay waited. If Larsen hadn’t seen Lucas, that meant he remained unaware of any changeling connection. Even if he did send a telepathic message, he could report nothing but an attack. His superior—Ming LeBon—would likely assume Shine involvement. Clay’s blood boiled at the thought of Ming, but he knew the Councilor wouldn’t pursue this particular evil if he destroyed the man who was driving it.
The Psy male began to slow down. As he bent over in a dark alleyway, breathing hard, Clay’s earpiece activated. It was Lucas. “We’ve got her—blindfolded. She can’t ID us and doesn’t want to. Says she’s one of Ashaya Aleine’s people, and she fits Jon’s description of the blonde he saw with Ashaya. She confirms the Psy you’re chasing is Larsen Brandell, the man behind the experiments. Gradient 7.”
A Psy that strong could shove enough power through a changeling’s mind to cause instantaneous death. So Clay gave Larsen no warning. Slicing out with his claws, he cut through the man’s jugular in a clean sweep.
Blood spurted in a dark splash, coloring the ground and the
wall beside the Psy. A gurgling sound followed. Larsen was dead before he hit the asphalt.
It was an execution. And that he felt no pity or guilt should have made Clay a monster. Perhaps it did. But as blood scented the air, sharp and metallic, he wondered if it took a monster to kill a monster.
Dressed only in
a pair of loose black pants, his body covered with sweat, Councilor Kaleb Krychek walked to the edge of his balcony and looked down into the gorge that fell away an inch from his feet. But he didn’t notice the dangerous view, his mind on the problem of Shoshanna and Henry Scott. While Nikita, Tatiana, and Ming were all dangerous adversaries, the Scotts were particularly problematic because they worked as a unit. Neither of the two was cardinal strength, but together, they were a lethal combination.
With Marshall gone, Shoshanna had begun jockeying for control of the Council. Kaleb had won the first skirmish, but he was under no illusion the battle would be easy. He glanced down at the mark branded onto his forearm, a deceptively clean-appearing shape that had shifted the course of his life beyond redemption. It was a reminder of what he was, what he was willing to do.
Something brushed his mind then, an oily darkness that looked to him for comfort. It was the voiceless twin of the NetMind, the neosentient entity that kept order in the PsyNet. The DarkMind, by comparison, was pure chaos. Very, very
few people knew about the DarkMind. And only one could assert any control over it.
As a cardinal telekinetic, Kaleb had a natural affinity with both the NetMind and the DarkMind. Now he reached out a psychic hand and touched the DarkMind.
Sleep
, he said.
Sleep
.
The DarkMind was tired today. So it slept. Kaleb knew the respite was temporary at best. The DarkMind carried within it all the violence and pain, the rage and the insanity that the Psy refused to feel. It had no voice but spoke through the acts of violence it perpetrated via the weak minds of compromised Psy. It was, in a sense, a lost child. It was also pure evil.
Kaleb had first spoken to it at seven years of age.
Satisfied the DarkMind would cause no more chaos for the next few hours, he returned his attention to the problem at hand. If either of the Scotts discovered the truth behind the mark that branded him, it would give them the weapon they needed to challenge his meticulously planned takeover of the Council. That could not be allowed to happen.
He glanced at his watch. While the sun shone in Moscow, it was now three a.m. in San Francisco. But this conversation could not be delayed. Retrieving a secure phone from inside the house, he punched in a code. “Put me through to Anthony Kyriakus. PsyClan NightStar.”
“Tell me,” Talin
said to Clay hours later.
He’d come to her an hour before dawn, after he and the others had cleaned up the evidence and buried the body so far in the forest that no one would ever find it. Larsen Brandell had, for all intents and purposes, disappeared without a trace.
Judd had left the woman’s mind unharmed. There was nothing anyone could learn from her other than that she’d been interrogated by two unknown men, men who had taken her organizer before setting her free.
DarkRiver and SnowDancer didn’t mind going up against the Psy, but sometimes it was better to work in the shadows, to become stronger than your enemy could imagine. They now had further evidence of the failure of Silence, evidence Clay had a feeling would end up being used as a weapon in the building revolution in the Net.
“Clay,” Talin prompted, as they lay face-to-face in bed. “Talk to me, darling. Tell me what’s put that look in your eyes.”
And because this was Tally, the one person to whom he’d never been able to lie, he told her everything. “I’m happy he’s dead,” he said, drinking her in as she leaned on her elbow and
looked down at him, that glorious mane tumbling over one shoulder. “It had to be done.”
“Was it like before?”
“No.” He surprised himself with that answer. “That was rage. Rage and protectiveness and helplessness. But it wasn’t like the soldier when we rescued Jon and Noor, either—that was in the heat of battle. This was a cold-blooded execution.” He refused to dress up the truth. Tally had to accept him, animal brutality and all. If she couldn’t … It would claw into his predator’s heart, but it wouldn’t make him set her free. He wasn’t ever letting her go. “I cut his throat.”
Instead of exhibiting disgust, she spread one hand over his heartbeat. “Why did you execute him?”
“If I hadn’t, he would have found a way to go on killing children.” Larsen’s own plans—stored in the organizer they had found in his pocket—had provided ample proof of his murderous tendencies.
Talin bent her head until their foreheads touched, her hair a shimmering curtain around them. “If that bastard was standing here right this second, I’d drive a knife into his black heart without hesitation.”
He put his hands on her hips. “Would you?”
“Yes.” Her lips brushed his. “He hurt my children. Ask any other woman in your pack and they’ll give you the same answer. Do you think I’m a monster for admitting that?”
“No.”
“Then how can you possibly be?”
Something tight unfurled inside him and he lay quiescent as she kissed him with delicate feminine sweetness, as if savoring the taste of him. “Still adore me?” he said into that kiss, his tone husky. A tone between lovers, between mates, between a man and the only woman he had ever wanted.
“Too much,” was her response. “I only feel whole when I’m with you. Does that make me weak?”
The cat stretched out inside him as she pressed kisses along his jawline, down his neck. “If you’re weak, then so am I.” He could function without her but in the way a machine functions. His heart, his soul, he had given to her a long time ago. Her hair stroked over him as she began to kiss her way downward. “Tally—”
“Shh.” She put her hand over his heart again and looked up, such tenderness in her gaze that he felt captured, contained, caged. But his jailer was soft and so sweet, he was completely in her thrall. “Let me love you tonight.”