The Psy-Changeling Collection (202 page)

She didn’t know why she let him put his hands on her best friend’s neck, didn’t know why she didn’t put the gun to his temple and pull the trigger. “Too slow.”

“Enough. It’s enough.” He placed his fingers over the wound.

She could see nothing, but heat radiated out from that spot to where her bloody fingers lay against her knee. It made her glance up at Ashaya in hope. The M-Psy remained slumped against the cameraman, Eamon, her normally glowing skin lifeless and dull.

Eamon was crying, too. So was the director. The slender woman—Yelena—stood there shaking, her cell phone in hand.
She’d screamed at the paramedics, told them to hurry, all of them knowing it wouldn’t be in time. The fucking Psy Council had got this one right. They’d timed it, used a gun instead of relying on a psychic strike that might’ve been deflected by tough mental shields, done everything with clockwork precision.

And now two people lay dying. Mercy reached out and gripped Ashaya’s hand. “You hold on.” To think she’d once wondered if the other woman felt anything for Dorian, she always looked so damn unaffected.
“Hold on.”
Her other hand she closed around Dorian’s. Linking them both. “Don’t you dare die on me, either of you. I plan to be godmother to your goddamn brats.”

The stranger kept touching Dorian. Heat kept radiating. When Mercy’s cell phone rang, she ignored it. Then Eamon’s rang. Then Yelena’s. The other woman stared at it as if it was a snake.

“Answer it,” Mercy said, starting to come out of the shock. The man working on Dorian, he reminded her a little of Judd. Not in looks. No, this guy’s ancestors had come straight from some part of the Chinese subcontinent. He was all sharp bones, olive skin, and slanted eyes lashed with ridiculously long lashes. His hair was cut short but it was oil-slick black, straight as a ruler. No, he looked nothing like Judd. But there was an air about him, the air of an assassin.

The one standing looked even more the type. His eyes were gray, his hair black, but he was the same. And Faith had sent them to Dorian. No, Mercy thought, not Faith. Of course not Faith. She swallowed, looked down. “He’s still bleeding.”

“Patience. I’m a surgeon, not a miracle worker.” Quiet, clipped words.

Strangely, they soothed her. Surgeons were always up themselves. And if this one saved Dorian’s—and by association, Ashaya’s—life, then he had a right to the arrogance. The man reached into his back pocket with one hand and brought out a flat box filled with lots of small tubes. Lifting his hand off Dorian’s skin for only the instant it took to angle himself so he could get a better look at the wound, he flipped open a tube and began to pour white gunk on Dorian’s bloody skin.

“It should work,” he muttered. “I’ve repaired the artery temporarily.”

Dorian’s neck was still seeping blood. “Why can’t you finish it?” She lifted her backup gun and, holding it deathly tight, pressed it to his temple. “Do it.”

He looked at her without any hint of fear. “I’m a field surgeon, an M-Psy with the capacity to seal certain injuries, hold others until the microsurgeons get there. In this case, the sealant will do a better job than I can.”

She pressed the barrel harder into him. “You’re a hack?”

“I’m the man who just saved your packmate’s life. Look.”

She glanced down and the Tk used the chance to try to shove her gun out of her hand. Her arm flew back but the gun remained in her grip. She didn’t care. Because the M-Psy had been telling the truth. Dorian wasn’t bleeding anymore. But that didn’t mean he was out of harm’s way. Ashaya’s heartbeat was as sluggish as Dorian’s. Mercy knew if one died, so would the other.

“He’s lost too much blood,” the surgeon said, his kit disappearing back into a pocket. “He needs his fluids replaced fast. I don’t know what’s wrong with the woman. I do physical injuries and she’s undamaged.”

“Can you do anything about the blood?” Mercy asked.

“Possibly.” He looked over his shoulder. “Emergency saline kit. Storage unit 1B, left-hand side. Telepathing the image.”

The supplies appeared in the Tk’s hand almost before the M-Psy finished speaking. He handed them over. “We have thirty seconds before our absence is noted.”

The M-Psy worked in furious silence. “This is field surgery at its roughest. The paramedics shouldn’t be long.” He shoved a strange-looking needle into Dorian’s vein with dexterity that spoke of experience, then pulled it out, leaving behind some kind of a small port. Attaching the saline line directly to that port, he told Mercy to hold up the bag of liquid, twisted a valve to release it, and said, “Go.”

Both men blinked out, taking their tools with them. Mercy looked down and saw the rough IV was functioning exactly as it should. “Thank God for arrogant surgeons.” She knew it was still touch-and-go, but at least now these two had a shot. God, please, they had to have a shot. “Don’t you fucking die on me, Blondie.”

“Mercy.” It was Yelena, her voice wobbly. “The call, it was
Faith. She said she asked for help, wanted to tell me to tell you not to shoot them.”

Mercy looked at the gun in her hand, then up at Yelena. “Our little secret?”

Giving a tearful laugh, Yelena went to take the saline bag.

“I’ve got it.”

“No.” A gentle hand on her arm. “You have to stay on guard … in case they come back.”

But, as things
fell out, the enemy didn’t come back. The next to arrive were the paramedics, followed by a swarm of Dark-River men and women led by a cold-eyed jaguar who rode guard on the two critically injured, then proceeded to lock down security in an entire wing of the hospital.

Vaughn bit out order after order until no one but Pack could get in. An oddly groggy Faith—her vision the reason Vaughn had arrived on the scene so quickly—took a seat in the corridor and told them she was scanning for psychic threats. Clay arrived over an hour later, having had to make the drive from Dorian’s cabin. He brought a comatose Amara Aleine with him. “I left Jamie and Desiree in charge of the perimeter,” he said, as he put Amara on a gurney and shoved a hand through his hair. “Sascha and Luc are on their way up. Sascha looks like hell.” He frowned, eyes on Faith. “Like you.”

Faith rubbed at her temples. “When Sascha realized what was happening, she shoved energy down Lucas’s blood bond to Dorian. She took it from herself, Lucas, and me. Lucas probably doesn’t look as bad because he’s alpha—he’s just stronger.”

“Why not use the rest of us, too?” Mercy scowled.

“She had to take it from the people she knew would lower their shields in an instant. Even with her ability to get through changeling shields, it would’ve taken too long otherwise.”

“Faith’s right.” Sascha’s tired voice, as she came through the doors with Lucas’s arm around her waist. “It only worked with Dorian because he was desperate to save Ashaya. When I shoved at his shields, he didn’t hesitate to let me in.”

Faith got up. “You saved their lives.”

Sascha shook her head as they walked into the room where all three—Dorian, Ashaya, and Amara—lay. “It would’ve been
too little too late if Ashaya hadn’t held on for those first critical moments.” She broke away to go to Dorian’s side. Her fingers trembled as she brushed his hair off his forehead. “He came within a second of dying.”

CHAPTER 46

She’s injured, extremely vulnerable, but we can’t reach her. I’d suggest waiting—if the Council backs off, the changelings will drop their guard. We can take her then. If she dies, we move on. We still have the drug.

—E-mail from Internet café in San Francisco to server in Venice

“She wouldn’t have
let him,” Lucas said, touching Ashaya’s face with his palm. It was a gesture of acceptance, as well as an alpha’s offer of protection. “Dorian’s mate is a strong woman.”

Sascha nodded but her heartbeat was ragged. Because lying there, Ashaya looked very small, her color faded, her body almost lifeless. “Tammy?” The changeling healer could do more than any medical doctor—for Dorian at least. But Ashaya was connected to him, so if he improved, so would she.

“Should be here soon,” Vaughn answered from the doorway, having come in to hug Faith. “She and Nate were on their way to drop the cubs at playgroup when I called.”

After Vaughn left to take up his watch again, Faith sat down on a chair beside Ashaya’s bed. “When I saw the shooting, it was strange—one of those new visions.”

Sascha perched on Dorian’s bed, holding his hand. Faith had curled her own hand around Ashaya’s. Letting them know they weren’t alone. It mattered, Pack mattered. “One of the ones that’s not clear-cut?”

Faith nodded, but waited as Lucas made a motion to head
out the door. “I’m going to check the body.” His mouth was a flat line.

“Mercy tore out the assassin’s throat,” Faith murmured.

“Saves me having to do the job.” With that, Lucas was gone.

“She took her cue from Dorian,” Faith explained to Sascha, having heard this from Mercy when the sentinel first arrived at the hospital, “began running as soon as he did. She was right behind the shooter, managed to use her claws to bring him down.”

Sascha was an E-Psy, but she couldn’t find any pity in her heart for the shooter. Because that man had hurt her family, her pack. “Good.” A pause to get her anger under control. “Tell me about the vision.”

“I saw the shooting,” Faith said with the quiet strength of an F-Psy who saw more than most people could imagine. “Then there was a sort of grayness that came down across it all, a kind of misty fog. I could hear garbled voices, glimpse bits and pieces of movement, but nothing concrete.”

“Things in flux.” Sascha looked from the fallen sentinel to his mate. Then her eyes drifted beyond. Releasing Dorian’s hand, she walked over to Amara Aleine’s bed. “Ashaya had to choose, that’s why. If she hadn’t accepted the bond, we’d have lost him.”

She forced herself to take Amara’s hand. Whatever she was, she was also a sentient being. And, “She made a choice, too,” she said, trying to order the fragments of memory. It had been chaos in the Web of Stars as the mating bond snapped into place, then dragged Amara in with it. “She tried to save Ashaya.” Amara had been ready to sacrifice her own life for her twin’s.

A broken kind of love, but love nonetheless.

“Forecasting stock reports was never this heartbreaking.” Faith rubbed at her temples again. “I almost forgot—in the last vision I had, before the grayness came down, I saw Amara, too. The darkness around her—the taint of the DarkMind—it was gone.”

Sascha closed her eyes. “I can see her in the Net, and you’re right—there’s nothing sticking to her.”

They both considered that. Faith blew out a breath. “The other man I saw. He was always a killer—the DarkMind only made him worse.”

“Amara’s never killed,” Sascha murmured.

“So now, is she—”

“Good?” Sascha shook her head. “No, there’s still an emptiness in her, still the presence of the seed the DarkMind used to get into her psyche. But … let’s just wait and see.”

Faith nodded. “Why do you think the DarkMind couldn’t follow her into our web? The NetMind can.” Sascha saw Faith realize the answer even as she spoke. “Because it’s caged. The Psy do everything to contain their darker emotions, and so the DarkMind is trapped.”

“Yes.” Something else clicked in Sascha’s brain. “I wondered how Ashaya managed to remain undiscovered in the Net, especially after she met Dorian. The mating dance simply doesn’t
allow
for emotional distance.”

“So why wasn’t the force of it leaking out into the Net and giving her away?” Faith’s eyes shifted from night-sky to obsidian. “Of course. If some sets of twins are becoming direct reflections of the twinning in the Net, and the DarkMind is attached to Amara—”

“—then the NetMind is attached to Ashaya. It’s probably protected her for a long time. It’s why no one ever saw her as a rebel threat.” Sascha looked at the two women lying in adjoining beds. Identical and yet not. Twin expressions of the split in the PsyNet. It made her wonder if reconciliation was even possible. Or had the Net been irrevocably damaged?

Dorian came awake
to the awareness that he was surrounded by Pack. They were everywhere in the air around him. But cutting through that familiar warmth was a shining presence that sang to his soul. His leopard uncurled and he turned his head. “Shaya.” There she was, so beautiful.

Her color vibrant, she lay curled up on her side, head pillowed on one hand. Sleeping. Safe. His remembered terror at seeing the gunman inches from her face made him want to bare his teeth and growl. Unable to lie still, he struggled to sit up. He was mildly surprised when no one jumped out to stop him. Taking advantage of his good fortune, he swung his legs over the side of the bed.

His legs held after a couple of shaky seconds. He found himself wearing a pair of dark sweatpants, nothing on top. There was a bandage on his neck, but he could tell the wound was almost gone. Medical magic, he guessed.

When he reached Ashaya, he saw she’d been clothed in soft blue flannel pajamas. He just wanted to get in that bed and hold her. Then his senses alerted him to the woman who slept on the third bed in the room. She was dressed in pale yellow and lay on her back. Part of him he hadn’t even known was wound up, relaxed.

Ashaya would’ve been devastated if she’d lost her twin.

Aching with the need to touch her, he was about to hop into Ashaya’s bed when his luck ran out. A tall redhead with worry carved into her skin walked into the room, took one look at him, and yelled, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Then she ran up, wrapped her arms around him, and kissed him full on the lips.

“God damn it,” she whispered as she drew back. “You fucking took ten years off my life.”

“Sorry, Merce.” He tugged at one of her loose curls. “Did you kill him?”

“Of course I did. Ripped out his throat.” She brushed at her eyes with the backs of her hands. “Son of a bitch was dead before he hit the ground.”

“And Keenan?”

“No problems. Sascha said Ashaya protected him instinctively—he didn’t feel a thing. Now that he can see his mom in the Web, he’s as happy as a clam up there with the wolves.” A sniff, another rub of her eyes. “We haven’t been able to contact your folks.”