The Psy-Changeling Series, Books 6-10 (57 page)

“Tag’s here,” Glen said. “I realized we’d need another telepath to control this one.”

Dev had already picked up the echo of Tag’s distinctive mental energy. One of the very few true telepaths in the ShadowNet, the other man had had a truly horrific childhood. There were some who said it was a miracle he hadn’t gone insane. Dev didn’t think it had anything to do with miracles—Tag was just one tough son of a bitch. “The boy tell you anything else?”

Glen rubbed at his face, looking haggard in a way Dev had never seen him look—as if the weight of experience threatened to crush him. “Glen?”

“The boy—Cruz,” the doctor began, “is worse than messed up. The drugs they kept him on blocked his psychic pathways, but they also stunted his development.”

“Fuck.” Like the Psy, and depending on the depth of their genetic inheritance, many of the Forgotten didn’t react well to human drugs. “Brain damage?” Doctors today could fix a hell of a lot, but even they couldn’t heal brain cells after they’d been fatally compromised.

To his relief, Glen shook his head. “No. His intellect is fine—it’s his psychic development that’s been seriously impaired.”

“He’s not as strong as he could’ve been?”

Again, Glen surprised him by shaking his head. “Kid’s off the charts. Tag says he’s cardinal level.”

Dev sucked in a breath. “That shouldn’t be possible.” Cardinals were rare, so rare, though the populace could’ve been forgiven for thinking otherwise with the recent high-profile defections of two cardinals from the Net. But Sascha Duncan and Faith NightStar were part of a very, very exclusive club. Across the world, there were millions upon millions of Psy. If there were even five thousand cardinals among that number, it would be more than Dev expected. “He can’t have cardinal eyes.” White stars on black, the eyes of the most powerfully gifted Psy were both eerie and startlingly unique.

“No—human,” Glen confirmed. “His genetic structure is mixed, like the rest of us. But when Tag drops the shields he’s holding on Cruz, the boy’s power will hit you like a hurricane.”

Dev ignored the obvious statement. “You’re telling me this boy has no shields of his own?”

The bags under Glen’s eyes seemed to grow ever deeper. “Yes. And while he might be of mixed blood, he’s got a phenomenal number of active Psy genes, so many recessive pairs . . .” Glen shook his head. “His psychic channels are blocked as long as he’s on the drugs, but take him off and they blow wide open.”

“Damn.” Dev thrust his hands through his hair, rapidly considering and discarding options. “He’ll go insane if we don’t figure out a way to give him permanent protection.”

“I considered a milder dosage of the drugs,” Glen said,

“even though I hate putting our children on anything.”

“But?”

“But those drugs basically turn him into a zombie.” He glanced toward the doorway, compassion in every tired line of his face.

“Does he understand what’s happened?”

“Tag hasn’t been able to draw him out—Cruz probably sees him as his jailer, so that’s not much of a surprise.”

Dev recoiled inwardly, remembering Katya’s turned back, her empty voice. “I’ll talk to him. Is there anything else I need to know?” Shoving everything but Cruz to the back of his mind, he took off his suit jacket, then undid and removed his tie before undoing the top buttons on his shirt and rolling up his sleeves. No use going into a child’s room looking like the school principal.

“He’s got no family as far as we can figure out—Aryan’s team tracked him on the ShadowNet.”

“Why didn’t we pick him up if he’s linked in?” Not every For gotten needed the biofeedback provided by the ShadowNet—like so many things, it depended on their complicated genetic structure. “This is why we constantly run those seminars, so adults know to look out for minors who might need help.”

“Because no one could ‘see’ him,” Glen replied. “Boy’s completely isolated.”

That, Dev knew, should’ve been impossible. Everyone had
someone
to whom they felt connected, even if that connection was an unhealthy one neither party would choose. “Aw, hell.” No wonder the kid was scared. Making a decision, he rubbed at his jaw. “Can Tag keep a hold on Cruz from outside the room?”

“Yes. You want to be alone with him?”

At Dev’s nod, Glen went to the bedroom doorway and waved Tag out. The big man walked into the living area on silent feet, his eyes blazing with fury. “I could strangle his grandparents.”

Dev shook his head. “Not if I got to shoot them first.” If Cruz had been brought in as per protocol, he would’ve been taught to develop and protect his powers from childhood. Now, they might be lucky to salvage his sanity. “I could be a while. You okay to hold the shield?”

“I can do it twenty-four hours a day if necessary,” Tag said. “Kid’s not fighting me—doesn’t know how. But I have to remain within a certain radius.”

“Can Tiara spell you?”

Tag turned his head but not before Dev glimpsed the dark red flush along the tops of his cheekbones. “She just got on an airjet from Paris.”

Glen’s eyes lit up with unholy glee. “You must be looking forward to catching up with her.”

“I’ll beat you both up if you don’t shut it.”

Glad for the tiny burst of amusement, even if it came nowhere close to easing the ice around his soul, Dev walked into Cruz’s room, shutting the door behind himself. The boy was curled up on his side, his ten-year-old body much smaller than it should’ve been.

His hair was dark and silky—and cut in a bowl shape that would’ve sent most kids howling to their moms. But Cruz didn’t have a mom to complain to. And, until the past few hours, he probably hadn’t even realized what he looked like. Now, the boy’s huge, dark eyes followed Dev as he grabbed a chair and pulled it forward so he was sitting at Cruz’s bedside. That was when he got the first shock.

Glen had said Cruz’s eyes were human. They weren’t. This close, Dev saw the odd flicker of dark gold in the depths of the near-black irises. Extraordinary. Why had no one noticed? Thinking back, he found the answer—it was possible the drugs had messed Cruz up so completely his gaze had gone dull, too.

“I’m Dev,” he said, and waited. Cruz was a ghost to his psychic senses, so slight as to be nonexistent.

The boy didn’t say a word.

Smiling, Dev took a different tack. “You’re not going to believe this, but I was once your age. If I’d had that haircut in flicted on me, I’d have done serious damage to the hairdresser.”

A blink. Nothing else.

“You want me to organize someone to fix it?”

Another blink, but slower this time.

Dev grinned. “Or you could keep it. Women seemed to find it cute on a kid. You’ll probably get spoiled half to death.”

Cruz raised a hand to his hair, pulling it forward as if to see the color. “My mom used to cut my hair.” His voice was quiet . . . and full of a vicious psychic power he had no ability to control.

Katya had been
through every room of the apartment. It was a generous space—bedroom, bathroom, and a kitchenette that flowed off the wide main living area. But there was no getting out of it except through the front door, no avenues of escape whatsoever. Even the knives in the kitchen were small, barely sharp enough to cut fruit.

Devraj Santos was not a stupid man.

At least, she thought, trying to find a silver lining, he respected her skills enough to put her in a place from which only a teleporter might be able to escape. Too bad that wasn’t part of her psychic skill set.

Another piece of memory slotted into the jigsaw that was her mind.

Her eyes widened. “Of course.” She’d been ignoring the very thing that made her different, that made her unique. Yes, she was a telepath—level 4.5 on the Gradient. That meant she was—just—a midrange Tp-Psy. She was also a Gradient 4.9 M-Psy.

Two midrange abilities.

What she’d just realized was that a person with two midrange abilities could sometimes create an amplification effect—usually on only one of the abilities. However, that effect was so unpredictable that it could be hidden by the user—and she’d hidden hers; otherwise, she would’ve been pressed into a very different kind of service.

That’s why, she thought, seeing a complete chunk of her past in one clean sweep, she and Ashaya had worked so well together in their rebellious activities—Katya had been able to get messages out to almost everyone in the resistance. Because when she exercised her ability to amplify, her Tp skills went from 4.5 to 9 on the Gradient.

And a level 9 telepath could talk to pretty much anyone she wanted. But—she frowned—she hadn’t, not for those last months. Why? Her hands lifted to her head, the heels of palms pressing against her temples.

A dart of pain, but it pulled the memory with it.

Katya staggered as her mind ricocheted back to the present. Ashaya had been right—the shadow-man . . .
Ming
—another flash of memory, her torturer’s identity delineated with flawless clarity—
had
suspected her. But now there was no one to watch her, to see if she suddenly changed her eating or sleeping habits. Ming had blocked her access to the Net, but he hadn’t done anything to stifle her ability to use her inborn talents. A chill spread over her heart—he might even have programmed her to use those talents exactly as she was thinking of doing.

A moment of paralysis. “No.” She tilted her chin, forced herself to breathe.

If she let fear stop her, he would have truly won. She had to go forward believing her actions were her own, trusting that she’d somehow risen from the ashes, begun to reform her personality, become the phoenix that lived in her soul.

Surely,
surely
Ming hadn’t considered her firestorm reaction to Dev, or how that reaction would make her want to become stronger—so she could hold her own against the relentless strength of him. “The only way to know is to try.”

Taking a deep breath, she relaxed into an armchair and closed her eyes. Usually when she used Tp, she was aiming for a specific destination—a particular mind. But, as a telepath, she could also “hear” others if she opened her senses. However, like most of her designation, she kept that aspect of her mind locked tight the majority of the time—even in the PsyNet, there were individuals whose shields leaked a constant flow of thought. Multiply that irritation by thousands and you had a recipe for madness.

And here, outside the Net? It was likely to be a million times worse. The majority of humans didn’t have anything but the most basic shields. Given their history, the Forgotten were likely to be a fraction more sophisticated, but there would still be any number of leaks, of voices.

Soothing the butterflies in her stomach with the knowledge that she could shut off the open pathways at any instant, she gripped the arms of the armchair and dropped her internal shields.

An instant of pure silence.

WHTIOSKTNIHIGHNSTIONTIJO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Her head snapped back against the headrest as her shields slammed shut with brutal force. It took several minutes for her head to stop ringing. Her spine was damp with sweat by the time she reopened her eyes, her hair plastered to her forehead.

“Okay,” she said, “okay.” Calming her racing heartbeat enough that she could force her mind to cooperate took another five long minutes. Finally able to think again, she gripped the chair arms even harder and dropped her internal shields once more—this time, by the merest fraction.

 

 

 

Dev was
talking to Cruz about model cars—a hobby the boy remembered enjoying before he’d been placed into state care—when there was a knock on the door. Dev got up. “I’ll have to see what that is. They wouldn’t interrupt unless it was important.”

Tiny lines appeared on Cruz’s forehead. “I can almost hear something.” He shook his head. “It’s gone now.
He
scared it away.” Making a face, Cruz fluffed his pillow and glared at the doorway.

Eyebrows raised, Dev opened the door and walked out—to find himself toe to toe with Tag. The big telepath had a thunderous look on his face.

Since the other man usually made an extreme effort to appear nonthreatening, Dev’s instincts went on full alert. “What?”

“Close the door.” His voice shook with fury.