“Strike first and we might have a slight advantage,” Tomás said, dark eyes incisive, “but if we send out teams, we leave our territory vulnerable. Could be exactly what they want.”
“Agreed.” Judd’s practical voice. “Aside from that, while the compound in South America won’t be an issue, we don’t know how many other operatives the Scotts have under their command.”
“And,” Riaz added, “we know they’re coming. This assault was an attempt to get us to retaliate, squander our resources. They want to soften us up before they attack.”
Matthias nodded from one of the comm screens, the rugged beauty of the Cascade Range visible from the window at his back. “Our previous strikes made sense at the time, but things have changed. I say we wait, we prepare.”
“We need to check something else, too,” Riley said from beside Hawke. “All indications are that they’re focusing their aggression on SnowDancer and DarkRiver, but we need to make sure they haven’t also got plans in place for the city.”
“Any luck tracking down the weapons?” Matthias asked.
Riley gave a grim shake of his head. “No.”
“Their past actions,” Judd said, “would seem to suggest they won’t destroy San Francisco, but given Henry’s recent behavior, there’s a possibility he and Shoshanna may be willing to sacrifice the city if it wins them the war.”
Cooper agreed, his face set in hard lines as he looked out from the comm screen. “Fact is, they get us and the cats out, there’s only Nikita and Anthony left to stand in their way. And neither has any significant military strength.”
“Still,” Drew pointed out, “it might not be a bad idea to scope those two out, see how many offensive Psy abilities they might be able to add to the mix. Even if it’s a few powerful telepaths, they can help hold off the mental strikes of the other side. Anthony’s people might even be able to predict some of the moves.”
“I’ve already asked,” Hawke said. “Seems war throws predictions off
course because so many things are done in the heat of the moment. But he says every one of his foreseers, Faith included, are certain the violence is set to hit soon. Might even be a matter of days.”
“So”—Indigo leaned forward—“we take a stand?”
Hawke nodded. “The more we spread out, the thinner the wall they have to breach.”
“Far better to dig in and make them dig us out,” Jem agreed, her blonde hair dull in the cloud-drenched light in her part of the state.
“That leads us to another question.” Riley tapped the twisted piece of metal he’d placed on the table when the meeting began. “According to our records, the single star is Kaleb Krychek’s personal emblem. We decided he wasn’t involved in this, but what if he’s playing everyone for fools?”
They all looked to Judd. Who picked up the fragment of hull and turned it over in his fingers. “Kaleb is difficult to predict, but my gut says this is a deliberate attempt to implicate him, confuse the picture.”
Indigo took the piece of debris from her fellow lieutenant. “Any way to confirm?”
“I asked Luc to call Nikita,” Hawke said, still put on edge by the idea of any kind of a relationship with a Psy Councilor. But distrust aside, they agreed on one thing—this region was theirs, and they would hold it.
Glancing at Sienna, he gave a nod. “There’s something else you all need to hear.”
SIENNA
had spoken to Councilors without flinching, grown up with an Arrow for an uncle, and had just spent the night with a wolf alpha. Yet her throat was dry, her tongue threatening to tie itself into a thousand knots. Because of Hawke. Because by bringing her into this, he’d tied his pride to hers.
With that thought came the sense of balance she needed. No matter what she’d said this morning, the truth was, she loved him, and in a way that wouldn’t allow distance, not even if that distance would save her pain. He wouldn’t,
couldn’t
, accept her as his mate, but she would give him everything. It was the only way she knew how to be.
“Sienna,” he said as she rose so everyone could see her, “tell the others what you told me.”
She laid out her theory about the likelihood of an ambush targeting SnowDancer’s most vulnerable.
“You sound very confident,” Cooper said. It was the first time they’d ever spoken, though she’d seen him in passing when he visited the den. The jagged scar on his left cheek was a distinctive marker against his bronze skin, but it was the near black of his eyes that held her attention. “I respect your intelligence, but you’re young and you’re no longer in the Net.”
She didn’t shy, because if there was one thing she understood, it was war. More, she’d lived in the dark long enough not to discount even the most sickening of possibilities. The wolves had a primal core of honor they didn’t realize, just didn’t expect certain actions. “I know you’re working on the assumption that it’s Henry and Shoshanna Scott behind this,” she said, “and they do appear to be the primary aggressors from what I’ve picked up. However, the strategy? It’s pure Ming LeBon.”
Judd shook his head. “Nothing points to Ming being involved. According to both Nikita and Anthony, he spoke against the Scotts on the Council.”
Under normal circumstances, Sienna would’ve bowed to Judd’s experience, but her uncle hadn’t spent ten years with Ming, hadn’t lived and breathed the Councilor’s ideas of military tactics, hadn’t seen the many faces he was able to wear with ease. “Henry Scott,” she said, focusing on the facts, “has done a number of aggressive things over the past year, but he’s never approached anything of this magnitude.
“Whatever happened to turn him aggressive, he doesn’t have the training or the skill to pull off such a big military op without serious help.” While she didn’t mention it right then, she was starting to have the disturbing feeling that Ming had been involved in the previous incursions on SnowDancer land as well—in truth, he may well have given Henry a “guiding hand” for longer than anyone knew.
Jem spoke for the first time, frown lines marring her brow. “She’s right. I’ve sort of made a hobby of keeping track of the Council—”
“Some hobby,” Riaz muttered, scratching at the bandage hidden under
his chocolate brown shirt—until Indigo reached over with a pen and tapped the back of his hand.
“Yeah, real scintillating stuff.” Jem rolled her eyes and carried on. “A couple of years back, Henry was linked, in most cases, to things Shoshanna spearheaded. It’s obvious that’s changed, but I’m with Sienna. No way he’s become a military mastermind all of a sudden.”
Hawke turned those wolf-pale eyes to Judd. “We need more data from the PsyNet.”
“Understood—but I can’t go to my contact with this.”
Having had a very interesting conversation with Judd a few months ago, where the Arrow had trusted him with the identity of the Ghost, Hawke wasn’t surprised. The lieutenant had shared the name because he’d wanted Hawke to be able to understand some of his decisions without further explanation, to be able to filter his responses through the lens of knowledge.
“Not worried about me being compromised?” Hawke had asked, aware of the lengths the Council would go to uncover the rebel’s identity.
“No. If they capture you, they’ll kill you. Even Psy know not to mess with certain predators.”
Now, Hawke said, “Do the best you can.”
Glancing at Sienna, he saw her tense her shoulders, rise to interrupt the buzz of conversation. “There is,” she said, “a foolproof way to figure out if my theory about their plans is correct.”
Hawke glanced at Riley. “We got the manpower to hold the perimeter while we do this?”
“I can ask a few of the cats to cover. Riaz can do the same for me in the den since Lara’s ordered him not to rip his stitches out on pain of healer wrath.”
“Then,” Hawke said, holding Sienna’s gaze, “let’s do it.”
Chapter 38
IT WAS NOT
wholly unexpected when Kaleb responded to Nikita’s message by teleporting into her office only minutes later. When you were the most powerful Tk in the Net, such things required a negligible use of power. His gaze zeroed in on the twisted piece of metal on her desk before she could say a word. “I see,” he said, taking a seat in the chair on the other side of the glass expanse.
The chair was positioned an inch lower than her own, meant to put visitors at a psychological disadvantage. Of course, none of them were Kaleb Krychek.
She watched him examine the metal, conscious that he could lie with such smooth ease she’d never pick it up. He might have been an ally of sorts, but she never forgot that the man across from her had been in the control of a true psychopath from a young age—there was no way to know what echoes Santano Enrique had left in his psyche.
“So,” he said at last, “what do you think?” Cardinal eyes watched her without blinking.
“I think you’re too smart to mark your assault craft with your emblem,” she said. “I also think you’re smart enough to do precisely that to throw us off the trail.”
He smiled. It meant nothing, she knew, was a physical action he’d learned
to mimic to manipulate the human and changeling masses. “True,” he said. “All true.” Returning the piece of hull to her desk, he looked out at the city through the plate-glass window at her back. “However, while the squad is mine, I do not yet own them.”
“You don’t need the Arrows.” Notwithstanding his telekinetic abilities, Kaleb had independent command over hundreds of men.
“Still, it makes no rational sense to strike now when I could go in later with a force almost guaranteed to take control with very little destruction.” Rising, he did up a button on his jacket, the material a deep navy featuring razor-thin pinstripes, the cut perfect. “The fact is, I don’t want this city. That has never been my goal.”
That, Nikita thought, was the most honest thing he could’ve said. Kaleb had far grander ambitions—he wanted to control the Net itself. Not taking her eyes off him as he gave a clipped nod before teleporting away, she reached for the phone. “It’s not Kaleb,” she told Max Shannon, aware the changelings felt more at ease dealing with her security chief.
But when she hung up, she didn’t return to her work. Instead, she reached out with her psychic senses along an old and familiar telepathic pathway.
Your child. She is healthy
.
Yes
, Sascha answered, though it hadn’t been a question.
She is extraordinary
.
Half-Psy, half-changeling—that in itself made Sascha’s words true, but Nikita knew that wasn’t what her daughter meant.
You’re not safe in the city
. Not with war lingering on the horizon.
It’s home, Mother
. A long pause.
Do you plan to leave this region?
No
.
A push along the telepathic pathway, and she realized Sascha was trying to send her something bigger than a direct thought. Aware her daughter’s Tp was weak, she reached out with her own, “caught” the sending in a psychic grasp . . . and saw an image of an infant with cat-green eyes and skin of a smooth golden-brown a shade paler than her mother’s.
Sascha’s child. Nikita’s grandchild.
Chapter 39
HAWKE SPOTTED THE
ambush from a ridge high above the isolated road that lay along one of the routes they would’ve used to evacuate their vulnerable. His wolf’s anger turned cold, primal. There were some things you did not do even in war. “Will they be able to sense non-Psy minds getting closer?” he asked the male lying on his stomach beside him.
Judd gave a single nod. “You might be able to distract them by sending in a decoy—fill up a transport with soldiers.”
“They can’t tell the difference between immature and mature minds?”
“Not if they’re running a general telepathic sweep.” He lifted the binoculars to his eyes again. “I can make out the weapons. They’re high-velocity—” A dangerous pause before Judd passed the binoculars to him. “Twenty degrees to the left of the man in the center.”
Hawke scanned twenty degrees, stopped. The cold-blooded bastards had a grenade launcher. “No mercy. They die. All of them.” This war was not going to be fought with the lives of their young and their old. “Scotts, Ming, whoever the fuck is behind this needs to know we mean business.”
“We eliminate the ambush, we give away the fact that we’re not only aware of their strategy, but capable of predicting it.”
Hawke’s wolf was howling for blood, but both man and wolf had learned
to think past the red haze of rage long ago. “It’ll also get rid of ten of their men at this location, however many the others have found.”
“Indigo’s team has another group in their sights,” Judd reported on the heels of his statement, “as does Drew’s. Riley’s sector looks clean.”
It was, Hawke had to admit, damn convenient to have telepaths in the packs. Sienna was paired with Indigo, Walker with Drew, Riley with Faith NightStar of all people. While the DarkRiver F-Psy was a noncombatant, she had the necessary telepathic range. Her mate was acting as her shield.
Because of that telepathic network, it took only minutes to organize the decoys, another hour to get the transports in position. None of the vehicles could be allowed within range of the grenade launchers—their purpose was simply to distract. In the interim, the changeling teams made their way down to just beyond the scope of the enemy’s telepathic sweeps.
“Stay out of sight,” Hawke told Judd. “They can’t know we have a Tk on our side, not until it’s unavoidable.” Getting the lieutenant’s nod, he said, “Everyone ready?”
“Yes.”
“Time.”
“Fifty seconds till the vehicles come into view, fifty-two till mobilization.”
It was a hard, fast battle. That was the only way to win with the Psy, given their ability to obliterate minds with their psychic strikes. There were also no teleport-capable telekinetics in this group, which signed their death warrants.
Afterward, Hawke stood looking down at the bodies and felt nothing but savage satisfaction. He wasn’t a man who liked to kill, but these people had planned to savage SnowDancer’s young. For that crime, death was the only penalty.
SIENNA
had never seen the wolves move with such cold, sleek violence. The Psy units stood no chance. Part of her was shocked at the bloody reprisal, but it was nothing to the protective rage that had filled her when she’d seen the grenade launcher, understood the true malevolence of their intentions.
For an instant, the X-fire had threatened to slip her grasp, but paradoxically, it was her protective drive toward the pups that had helped her get it back under control.