Tangle of Need (55 page)

“The psych eval may have been wrong in this case.” Vasic returned to
the center of the room. “He has run things with military precision for Henry.”

Aden watched Vasic lower his head, flex his hands. “He is also a zealot.”

“Some would say so are Arrows.” Blood droplets began to peel off walls and out of the carpet, coalescing into a single red stain above the dead man’s body. “We very much were at the start, when Adelaja created the squad.”

An elite unit formed to protect Silence, that had been their mission statement. For over a century, the Arrows had ensured no one dared raise his or her voice against the Protocol, believing it was Silence that had saved their race. Now they knew Silence had consequences that could lead to the extinction of their people, and that war was inevitable. After it was over, they would have to find a new reason for being.

The giant “drop” of blood mixed with smears of brain and bone grew bigger and bigger as Vasic collected minute traces from the carpet, the walls, the air itself. If the anchor decided to return to her home once the danger was past, she’d find no evidence of violence.

“Where shall I take it?” Vasic asked, his tone indicating no emotional disturbance at the grim task.

However, Aden had known the other man nearly his entire lifetime, understood how close Vasic was to the final edge. “Biohazard container at the Arrow morgue,” he said, and watched as, instead of teleporting the biological material out, Vasic teleported one of the containers in. The blood and brain matter poured easily into the floating receptacle, not a drop spilled, and then the container was capped and teleported away.

Vasic next lifted the body off the ground and cleaned up the blood trapped beneath, while Aden rechecked the room for any covert surveillance devices the Tk might’ve planted in advance of his attack. He knew Nikita and Anthony’s people had already done a pass, as had the changelings, but an Arrow took nothing on faith.

He found no sign of a bug.

Satisfied, he turned off the mobile disrupter he’d switched on when Vasic ’ported them in.

“The room’s clean,” Vasic said into the silence, the corpse floating a few feet in front of him. “The morgue?”

“Yes.”

Chapter 67

“IF I’M UNDERSTANDING
how the anchor network works,” Adria said, a sudden chill invading her veins as they drove through the light drizzle that had begun to fall, “then the fail-safes connected to this anchor have to be dead.”

Brutal comprehension darkened Riaz’s expression. “I hope to hell you’re wrong.”

Thankfully, it turned out she was.

“It looks like Pure Psy decided to reverse the order,” Judd told them when they met the former Arrow in the White Zone on their return to the den, his jaw tight with contained fury, his hair damp from the misty rain. “Murder the anchor, then use the ensuing chaos to eliminate the backups. But there’s a second, worse option—that they intended to go directly from anchor to anchor in the state.”

“Kill enough of the linchpins,” Adria said, the surface proximity of her wolf apparent in the amber tinge to her eyes, “and the support structure would’ve started to crumple.”

Judd took in the blood that stained the bottom of Adria’s torn T-shirt, her sweatshirt bunched up in her hand. The soldier had tilted her face toward the rain, and he knew she wanted only to wash off the stink of blood and death. “The fail-safes are backups,
not
anchors,” he said, confirming her guess. “They can’t maintain the PsyNet on their own over an extended period, and even if other anchors stretch their zones of influence to cover the gap, the fabric would eventually stretch too thin, begin to tear.”

Riaz’s gaze connected with Judd’s. “I thought I got it earlier,” he said, “how big this is, but I didn’t, not until now. Anyone who knows the locations of every anchor across the world, or in a large enough region, can annihilate the PsyNet.”

“Yes.” The reason no other race had ever been able to use that weakness to wipe out the Psy was a lack of knowledge—only a Psy in the Net, one with access to classified information, could gather data on the identities and physical locations of the anchors and their fail-safes.

Adria blew out a breath. “My God … the trust they’ve put in us.”

“Whether or not other Psy do,” Judd said, “Nikita and Anthony both understand there are certain lines DarkRiver and SnowDancer will not cross.” That core of honor was one of the reasons Walker and Judd had risked defecting into such dangerous changeling territory—the idea of “acceptable collateral damage” was anathema to the packs. Children and innocents
were not
to be harmed, and a Net collapse ended lives with pitiless impartiality. “Regardless, it’s only a temporary trust—soon as the anchors are moved, we’ll no longer have that information.”

“Why are the safe houses taking so long to organize?” Riaz asked, blinking away the water beading on his lashes. “These anchors are sitting ducks right now.”

Judd’s own frustration echoed the other lieutenant’s. “They can’t be moved too far.” It was a critical limitation. “Not if they’ll be staying in that location for a while, and we have to assume they’ll be there for the duration.” The anchor population needed to remain evenly distributed—too many in one area, or anchors moved too far outside the region, would warp the fabric of the PsyNet. “It makes it harder to find safe bolt holes.”

Riaz swore low on his breath, grim understanding in his expression. “Because the assassins know they only have to search a limited area.”

“Yes.” Anchors also had a high need for stability, so they couldn’t be shifted to a temporary location, then moved again without negatively impacting the Net in this region. “However, the latest update from Nikita and Anthony gives an estimate of forty-eight hours before the relocations begin.”

“How bad is it going to get?” Adria said after Judd finished speaking, fighting the urge to wrap herself around Riaz and just breathe in the
living heat of his skin until the chill left her bones. She didn’t regret killing the assassin, but the violence had shaken her nonetheless—she wanted to kiss away the ugly bruises on her lone wolf’s neck, to cuddle into him and allow her guard to drop.

“Bad,” Judd said in response to her question. “Pure Psy might’ve lost this Tk, but they’ll find another.” Unspoken was the reality that Judd’s designation was one of the most unstable in the Net, vulnerable fodder for a group that promised peace. “There is a high chance they’ll move on to random targets … to people we can’t protect.”

Bleak and dark, his words made it clear just how many Psy might die in the coming days and weeks, perhaps months. “They won’t win,” she said fiercely. “We won’t let them.”

Judd touched his fingers to her cheek in an unexpected caress from this most remote of males, his skin cool from the rain. “You helped save an anchor today, and in doing so, protected thousands of innocents. It’s a start.” He nodded toward the SUV they’d driven up in. “I’m going to see if I can find out anything further.”

A sudden shiver quaked Adria’s frame as the Psy lieutenant got in and started the engine. “I need to shower.”

“Come here.” Eyes night-glow in the mist turning to fog, Riaz went to tug her into his arms.

“No. I’m all—”

He hauled her close, squeezing her nape and bending to rub his cheek over hers. Stubbled, his jaw was like sandpaper, but she didn’t care, his skin an inferno. All she wanted was to crawl into him and never come out.

“I damn well am not letting you be alone right now,” he growled. “So don’t you
dare
send me away.”

She had to, of course she had to, but she was weak enough that she clung to the solid strength of him for long minutes before allowing him to walk her back to her room. But when he would’ve come in, she put her hand on his chest and held him at bay. “No.” It was so hard to get the single word out past the violent need choking her up.

Eyes of Spanish gold slammed into hers, the fury in them tempered by a tenderness that killed her. Ignoring her hand and her declaration both, he walked in and closed the door behind him.

“Riaz—”

But he was already spinning her around and tugging off her damp T-shirt. Gripping it in one hand, his other splayed on her abdomen as he stood behind her, he said, “I will never forgive you if you don’t let me take care of you tonight.” It was the vow of a predatory changeling male driven to the brink.

To her shame, she wasn’t strong enough to push him away a second time. Instead, she let him strip her with gentle hands, let him join her in the steamy warmth of the shower and tend to her with a wild affection that broke her heart. There was no longer any anger in him, only a possessive gentleness that branded her as his.

Snuggled in a towel afterward, she sat while he dried her hair, then held on to him as he picked her up and carried her to the bed. Where he cuddled her close and ran his hand down her spine until she knew that held safe in his arms, the woodsmoke and citrus bite of his scent in her every breath, she’d have no nightmares.

“Te amo.”

She was on the verge of sleep, her eyes heavy, but she heard the words of love he spoke, her beautiful black wolf … and she knew this night would break the last remaining fragment of her heart.

Chapter 68

VASIC WAS A
killer. It was what he’d been programmed to be since he was a child pulled into the Arrow Squad. He’d been so confused, so scared. Because he’d still felt then, had known even as a four-year-old that the people who’d come for him weren’t people he wanted in his life.

He’d escaped them, too. Multiple times. No security could contain a Traveler. That was why he’d been placed in the “care” of another Arrow, the only other Tk-V he’d met in his entire lifetime—and the only one who had understood how Vasic’s mind worked well enough to trap him.

“Don’t you feel anything?” It had been an innocent question from a child to the man who would become his father, trainer, and jailor.

“Emotion is a weakness. You’ll be Silent soon enough, then you’ll understand.”

Vasic hadn’t simply become Silent, he’d become even more an Arrow than his mentor. Patton had been on Jax, the drug used to control Arrows, so long that he’d become a weapon that was aimed, pointed, and told who to kill. And when his performance began to slip, he’d been put down like a dog.

Vasic hadn’t been on Jax anywhere near as long as Patton, and so, in spite of what many believed, he could still think for himself. Jax might create perfect soldiers, but it also eventually numbed the minds of those soldiers. Vasic’s mind remained razor sharp, his abilities honed to a lethal edge—after all, as a Traveler, he was part of Designation Tk, teleportation not his only skill.

Now, Vasic turned from the view of the Pacific afforded by this
remote headland, the grass reaching the tops of his combat boots, and said, “You have Henry?”

“Yes.” Aden’s gaze was on the horizon, the sky a pale gray that merged into the black lick of the sea, sunrise at least an hour away.

“How?”

“I didn’t look for Henry,” Aden answered in an apparent paradox. “I looked for medics trained in treating severe burn injuries who’d disappeared off the grid.”

And that was why, Vasic thought, Aden led the Arrows. “Send me the markers for the teleportation lock.”

A quiet knock on his mind, a request for entry. When he opened the telepathic channel, Aden sent him detailed images of the sterile glass chamber in which Henry lay, his body scarred by X-fire.
The medic from whose mind I took the images will not sound the alarm—he has no awareness that I infiltrated his shields.

“Henry,” Aden added aloud, “has never thought long term, so the fact he left his medics unshielded was a foreseeable error, but I expected better from Vasquez.”

Vasic considered what they knew of the man who was Henry’s general, weighed it against his acts to date. “No matter what he believes, reason alone doesn’t drive him.” And such a man made mistakes. “What about Ming?”

They both knew Henry had had help in his more recent military activities—the former Councilor wasn’t creative enough to have come up with strategies such as the sonic weapon that had turned the changelings’ sensitive hearing against them. It was impossible to prove if Ming had also had a hand in the evolution of the idea to cripple the Net by murdering anchors, but the likelihood was high.

“We risk a fatal Net cascade if we eliminate two former Councilors so close together,” Aden said, his hair lifting in the salt-laced wind coming off the crashing waves.

Not every Council death, Vasic knew, had such an impact. It depended on the surrounding circumstances. Marshall Hyde’s assassination had caused a minor ripple at most. However, right now, the devastation in Cape Dorset had the populace reeling. Another shock could
shatter a number of fragile minds. However—“Henry is already dead as far as most people are concerned.”

“Exactly. His execution should leave the Net relatively unscathed.”

“When do you want me to finish the job?”

Aden’s eyes met his, the dark brown irises having a sense of life in them that Vasic no longer saw in his own. “I’m not your controller, Vasic. If we’re to do this, we’ll do it together.”

“That’s not rational. It heightens the risk of discovery.”

“Perhaps,” Aden said quietly, “we shouldn’t always be so rational. Judd wasn’t rational when he gave up everything on the slim chance that his family would find sanctuary with SnowDancer, and he has a life.”

While they existed.

Vasic knew he would never have a life like Judd, was too damaged, but Aden had a chance. “I’ll get it done,” he said, and teleported out before the other man could stop him.

Arriving at his quarters, he pulled a black cloak around his body, the hood and over his head, tugging the cowl forward until it shaded his face to dark invisibility. There was no need to give Henry’s men, Vasquez in particular, a specific target—the more confusion, the less effective Pure Psy would become.

A heartbeat of concentration on the images Aden had retracted from the mind of the burns specialist, and he was standing beside Henry’s sleeping form, the teleport so precise the air didn’t stir, the proximity alarms quiet. Shadows filled the muted light of the room, until he was simply another part of the darkness.