The Psy-Changeling Collection (85 page)

Smiling, she looked up at the dark angel by her side. Dressed in black, with that hair and those eyes, there was no other way to describe him. “Thank you.”

His lips were a beautiful shape, full enough to tempt but with a hard edge that made her stomach twist. Then he spoke and it was a brutal reminder that he wasn’t simply a strong, sexy male. He was Psy. “Don’t thank me. I’ve been unable to find any concrete answers for you in relation to the dream-visions. You need to talk to someone more knowledgeable—the dreams could be a sign of mental degradation.”

She withdrew her arm from his and shoved both hands into the pockets of his jacket. The scent of him, powerful and intrinsically masculine, was intoxicating to her changeling senses, but she no longer wanted to be surrounded by it. “You think I’m losing my mind?” It was her secret fear, the monster under the bed, the cold chill down her spine.

“Psy don’t dance around the facts. I meant exactly what I said.”

God, but he sounded arrogant. “That’s a load of bull.” She scowled. “Your Council has double-talk down to a fine art.”

Dark eyes with snow reflected in their depths turned to her. “They are not my Council and I am not their puppet.” Icy enough to flay off her skin.

She winced. “Mental degradation? If that doesn’t mean madness . . .”

“Enrique may have damaged parts of your organic brain tissue while running his psychic experiments, caused lesions or bruises.” He watched her with the unblinking stare of a predator, as if gauging her strength. “He was a Tk and the use of telekinetic powers almost always has a physical effect. The autopsies of his other victims revealed them to have suffered major brain injuries.”

Pictures. The butcher had shown her pictures of the others. “I remember.”

“However, the likelihood of such damage is minimal. Sascha and Lara made sure to repair all organic tears before they began healing things on any other level.”

Brenna bit her lower lip and took a deep, shaky breath. “Sascha said that that part should’ve taken longer, but that I was so determined to have my mind back, it was as if I
willed
the broken parts to heal.” Almost as if she were Psy. “Maybe I rushed her.”

“I called her after you spoke to me,” he said, continuing to watch her with that hunter’s gaze. “You did rush her, but not in the physical healing.”

She wanted to smack him for his presumption, despite the fact that she’d asked for his help. “None of that changes the fact that Sascha doesn’t have experience with this kind of thing.” And the empath, who had the ability to sense and heal the darkest of emotional wounds, had already seen her broken and bloody too many times. No matter her kindness, Sascha reminded Brenna of things she’d rather forget.

“No. But Faith does.” Judd folded his arms. “You need to talk to someone.”

“I’m talking to you.” Why, she couldn’t rationally explain. He was cold and merciless, had all the charm of a feral wolf.

“I’ll set up the meeting with Faith.”

She gritted her teeth. “I’ll do it. Vaughn doesn’t like you, in case you hadn’t noticed.” She’d met both Faith and her mate, Vaughn, when the foreseer had come up to the den to accept a gift made for her by the nursery children, children who were alive because of a vision Faith had had. Without her warning, they would’ve lost several pups. “Not that you go out of your way to be friendly.”

“That’s irrelevant.” Turning away, he looked out over the frozen vista. “Emotion is not one of my weaknesses.”

Faith
had just ended a short but disturbing conversation with Brenna Kincaid when Anthony Kyriakus, head of the NightStar Group—and her father—walked into the meeting room. Putting the phone in her pocket, she leaned into Vaughn, waiting for Anthony to speak.

“There’s a Ghost in the Net.” He circled to stand on the other side of the table.

It wasn’t what she had wanted to hear, the child in her still hungry for things she knew Anthony might never be able to give her. Hurt was a dull ache in her body. Then Vaughn closed a hand over her nape and the sadness passed—she was loved, cherished, adored. “A ghost?” She sat and the men followed.

“No one knows the identity of this individual, but he or she is being credited with a number of insurgent activities.” Anthony passed her a disc containing the names of companies that had requested a forecast since they last spoke—forecasts she provided under a subcontracting agreement with NightStar.

She put the disc to one side, more interested in this Ghost. “Is he one of us?” If there was one thing Faith and her father both agreed on, it was that they wanted their people freed from a Silence that was false—Anthony might be coldly Psy, but he was also the leader of a quiet revolution against the Council.

“There’s no way to know. However, it is evident that the Ghost is part of the Council’s superstructure—he or she has access to classified data, but hasn’t acted on anything above a certain level. That could be because this individual doesn’t have higher access, or because he—”

“—is being very careful not to do anything that might narrow the focus of inquiry as to his, or her, identity,” Faith completed.

“Good strategy.” The jaguar at her side finally spoke, his thumb continuing to stroke over her nape. “The Council’s got to be pissed if this rebel is leaking classified data.”

“Yes.” Anthony turned back to Faith. “The Ghost was active while you were still part of the Net. Do you recall the explosion at Exogenesis Labs?”

“The place where they’re theorizing about implants that might lower the percentage of
defects
?” She spit out the last word. It was the label the Council used to describe those who refused to buckle under the emotionless regime of the Silence Protocol. “They want to cut into developing brains and initiate Silence on an organic level.”

Anthony didn’t react to her open emotionalism. “The Exogenesis strike killed two of the lead scientists on the implant team and destroyed months of work.”

“Your Ghost isn’t afraid to kill.”

Faith heard no judgment in Vaughn’s tone—her cat had killed to protect the innocent. And children, the first victims of implantation should the procedure be put into practice, were the most innocent of all.

CHAPTER 7

“It appears not.
The explosion was investigated by both Enforcement and the Council, but without active support from a majority of the populace.”

“Why?” Vaughn asked, his body heat so seductive she found herself leaning ever closer to him, her hand on the hard muscle of his thigh. “Wouldn’t this implant make the Psy even more efficient?”

Anthony nodded. “In a sense. But the dissidents argue that Protocol I, while ensuring universal compliance with Silence, would have the unavoidable side effect of linking our minds together. Not as the PsyNet does, but on a biological level.”

Protocol I.

That it already had an official name was a bad sign. “They’re talking about a true hive mind.” Faith couldn’t control the disgust that laced her words.

“Yes. It’s nothing that appeals to those of us who prefer to run our enterprises free of interference. That would become impossible should the entire race begin to act as one entity.” He picked up his organizer—the thin computer tablet ubiquitous among the Psy. “From the pattern of attacks, it appears the Ghost shares our goals, but without knowing his or her identity, we can’t coordinate our efforts.”

Vaughn leaned forward. “The more people who know a name, the higher the chance of exposure. I say let the Ghost do his—or her—thing, and ride the wave it generates.”

“Your conclusion mirrors mine.” His tone signaling the end of the topic, Anthony brought up something on his organizer. “BlueZ has been waiting for its latest prediction for a month. Can you move it to the top of your list?”

Faith picked up her own organizer. “I can try.” She still hadn’t cracked the secret of bringing on visions to order. It was beginning to appear that that was one thing the Council hadn’t lied about—maybe there was no way to harness her gift that far.

Anthony moved on to another item on the agenda. Half an hour later, they were done and she was hugging him good-bye. He didn’t return the gesture, but did pat her lower back once. Only a former inmate of Silence could have understood the incredible impact of that act. She had tears in her eyes when he pulled away and walked out the door.

Barker, a DarkRiver soldier, was waiting to escort him out of the pack’s financial HQ. Located in downtown San Francisco, near the organized chaos of Chinatown, the building was both public and highly secure.

“Come here, Red.” Vaughn dragged her into his arms, melting the lump in her throat with his rough brand of affection.

It scared her sometimes, the strength of what she felt for him. “He’s important. The Ghost.” She’d had a
knowing
, not a vision as such but a hint of how things might be.

That was when it hit her. A true vision. A split-second image of the future.

But this one had nothing to do with the Ghost. It was about Brenna. Death. The SnowDancer was surrounded by death, her hands drenched in blood. Whose blood? Faith didn’t know but she could smell the raw-meat scent of it, the desperation, and the fear. Then it was gone—so fast she wasn’t even left with an afterimage on her retinas, much less any of the disorientation that sometimes accompanied the flashes of foresight.

It had given her nothing concrete, nothing she could share with Brenna, but it did serve to back up her instincts about what the other woman had told her on the phone. Hugging Vaughn, she returned to the topic at hand. “Do you think I should contact the NetMind about the Ghost?” A sentience that was at home in networks of minds, the NetMind was the librarian and some believed, the policeman of the PsyNet. Faith, however, knew it to be so much more.

“This guy seems to be working fine alone. You sure you want to mess with that?”

“I should’ve known you’d take the side of the lone wolf,” she teased, delighting in being able to do so.

He growled and she felt the vibration against her cheek. “Don’t compare me to those damn feral things.”

Tilting up her face, she smiled. “Damn wolves.” It was an imprecation often muttered by DarkRiver cats.

“Too right.” He kissed her. Hard. Fast. Vaughn.

“I’ll take your advice—I don’t want to inadvertently trigger something in the NetMind.” Though the developing sentience was good, it wasn’t completely free of the Council. “You know, I think the Ghost is going to be important to DarkRiver as well. Not now. But one day.”

“A vision?”

She shook her head. “Not even a knowing, really, more of a—” The words wouldn’t come.

“A gut feeling.”

“Yes.”
No wonder she’d been blocked—admitting to such a thing would’ve gotten her medicated in the PsyNet. “Oh, and, my darling cat, we’re going up into SnowDancer territory tomorrow morning for a meeting.”

“Who?” He fisted her hair in his hand, but she knew it was a gesture of affection.

“Brenna Kincaid.” She decided not to mention that Judd Lauren would also be present. Vaughn had a decidedly negative reaction to the tall, dark, and very dangerous Psy. Judd . . . no, she saw nothing about him. Of all the people she had ever met, it was Judd who was the most opaque to her foresight. So dark. So brutally alone.

Twenty-four hours
after she’d bowed to Judd’s demands, Brenna still wasn’t sure about meeting with Faith, but it was too late to back out. They got together in a small clearing about twenty minutes from the den. Despite her misgivings about this, Brenna had to admit the DarkRiver pair had picked a beautiful spot. The snow was soft underfoot and a frozen waterfall glimmered a few meters away, the ice glazed to an almost painful brightness by the midmorning sun. Faith’s dark red hair appeared aflame against all that white.

Then there was no more distance between them. “Thank you for coming.”

Faith smiled, but Judd spoke before the F-Psy could respond. “You chose a location extremely close to the den. Why not somewhere nearer your pack?”

Brenna had wondered about that, too. The cats might be their allies, but the two packs were not yet friends. And the males of predatory changeling species’ were notoriously protective of their women—mates, daughters, and sisters. She should know. Drew and Riley were driving her to madness. It had reached the point where she knew something had to give. She just hoped they all survived the explosion.

But Faith seemed happy with her overprotective male. “Vaughn finds it amusing to get past your patrols without detection.”

Vaughn looked unrepentant. “They’re getting sloppy. Even with Red here stomping away, I had no trouble getting in.” He grinned when his mate gave him a warning look.

Brenna felt something clutch in her stomach at the easy intimacy between the two, at the grin from a cat she’d never before seen smile. That was what she should be seeking—a sensual, affectionate changeling male. They didn’t bother to hide their emotions, touched as easily as they breathed, laughed with their mates even if they didn’t with anyone else.