Vasic could sense Miane's frustration. There were oceans filled with saltwater.
Then Tanique said, "Contained. The saltwater is contained." He frowned. "Old concrete and saltwater."
That immediately narrowed the focus but it still cast a wide net. Somewhere out there, there was a saltwater pool or reservoir where Leila had been taken either so she could swim and regain her muscle tone, or where she was being trained for an operation.
"Anything else?" Miane asked. "Even the smallest crumb could help us narrow down the search area."
Tanique rubbed his temple. "It doesn't make sense, but I did catch an image of a feline of some kind." He lifted his hands instinctively above his head, cupping them in the shape of ears before he seemed to realize what he was doing and dropped them. "Its ears stood straight up and they had black tufts on the tops."
"Could one of them be a changeling?"
Vasic had pulled out his palm-sized organizer and was scrolling through images of felines as Miane asked that question.
"I don't know," Tanique said. "It was a very faint impression, could even have been from a feline incursion into the building prior to your packmate's captivity here."
Vasic turned the screen of the organizer toward Tanique. "Did the feline look like this?"
"Yes. What is it?"
"A Canadian lynx."
Miane blew out a breath. "There are multiple lynx packs across Canada, never mind the world, but at least we have a place to start." She held out a hand toward Tanique. "Thank you. We owe you one."
Vasic wondered if the alpha realized she'd just pledged a favor to PsyClan NightStar.
As he watched, Miane walked to the building, pressed her hand against it, and said, "We'll find you, Leila. Don't give up. Your pack is coming."
PART 4
Chapter 33
MIDMORNING THE DAY after the unsuccessful attempt to rescue Leila Savea, and Dorian had tracked down the ship involved in the abduction attempt against Naya. Lucas had just authorized the plan the sentinel had put together for the capture of the ship's captain when Devraj Santos arrived in DarkRiver territory with his wife, Katya, and a boy named Cruz.
The leader of the Forgotten had become a stronger and stronger ally over time, the relationship between DarkRiver and SnowDancer and the Forgotten such that he'd asked the packs to offer sanctuary to gifted Forgotten children and their families. That sanctuary was needed because the world had more than one mercenary individual who wanted to control the children's unique new abilities.
Lucas had known Dev was coming, and now the two of them stood to one side of a small open area in the forest, where Naya, Keenan, and Noor were playing with Cruz. The older boy was good-natured about the younger children's enthusiasm; nothing about him betrayed that he was a telepath of cardinal-level power, his eyes near-black with unexpected flickers of dark gold rather than night sky. Because Cruz was one of the Forgotten, not Psy.
As Lucas watched, Cruz went to say something to Sascha before he smiled and returned to the field of play. Lucas's mate was standing with Katya and Ashaya, the three women having a quiet discussion. Dev's wife and Ashaya had once been scientists in a lab controlled by Ming LeBon. Both had helped children even when they couldn't fashion an escape for those children, and both had paid a price for that help. While Lucas didn't know Katya as well as he did Ashaya, he had a soft spot for her.
Katya, in turn, had a giant one for Noor and Keenan, the bond between them formed out of bleak despair that had been transformed into incandescent joy.
His and Dev's current conversation, however, had nothing to do with either the children, the Forgotten hidden in DarkRiver and SnowDancer, or Cruz. It involved a Forgotten teenager who Lucas had claimed as part of his pack.
"I've confirmed the rumors your Rats first picked up," Dev said to him, the golden brown skin of his face all harsh lines. "There's a bounty out on Jon. Five million to anyone who can capture him alive."
Lucas's claws pricked at his skin. When the Rats reported the rumor over a month earlier, he'd immediately gotten in touch with Dev. Both because the Forgotten had made it a point to infiltrate networks that might pose a threat to their people and because if someone was after Jon, it was possible he or she--or they--would also attempt to snatch other Forgotten children.
Such abduction attempts had already occurred more than once.
"Our message wasn't an empty threat," he said in a tone that held the panther's harsh rage. "Anyone hurts or tries to hurt or take one of DarkRiver's young, and they'll die by claws and teeth."
"You haven't heard the best part." Dev's voice was both approving and amused.
Lucas went to answer, was distracted when Cruz came running over.
"I forgot my juice," the boy said, his face hot from exertion.
Dev picked it up off the picnic blanket Sascha had brought, on which she'd placed snacks and drinks for the children. "Here you go," he said, bumping fists with the eleven-and-a-half-year-old. "Don't let those three"--a nod at where a ferocious and tiny black panther was pretending to bite Keenan while Noor tried to tackle him--"give you too much trouble."
Cruz rolled his eyes after taking a drink. "They're babies." A put-upon sigh. "But I better play with them so they don't get bored."
Lucas's lips curved as Cruz ran back to enthusiastically join in whatever game it was the three DarkRiver cubs and one Forgotten boy had thought up. "Kid's looking much better," he said to Dev. "Sascha says his shields are phenomenal." Lucas's mate was the one who'd helped create those shields, Dev having asked for her help after discovering that Cruz had no shields of his own, his mind naked to the world.
"She gave him the base." Dev slid his hands into the pockets of his black pants. "And fuck she's good, Lucas. The more we study Cruz's shields, the more we realize what she built, and it's extraordinary."
Lucas's panther stretched out in pride inside him. "Yes," he agreed. "But I can tell she's pleased with the progress he's made on his own." That checkup was part of the reason Dev and Katya had made this trip.
"He's a tough kid." The pride was Dev's this time. "Resilient doesn't come close to describing it." The other man was quiet for a moment before adding, "He's still mourning his mom and dad, but he's not dwelling on the horrific way he was diagnosed as schizophrenic and drugged. The nightmares are all but gone."
Lucas knew it wasn't only Cruz's resilience that had permitted the boy to heal; it was the fact that he was surrounded by a shield of love and fierce protectiveness. Cruz had the air of a child who knew nothing could get to him. A lot of that fell at the feet of Katya Haas and Devraj Santos. Which brought Lucas back around to the protection of the children in his care.
"The bounty," he said. "Details?"
"I'll send you what we have. The offer was sent directly to a number of for-hire black ops and mercenary units. The best of the best across racial lines. Whoever it is means serious business."
Folding his arms, Lucas said, "It also means we can't play the client by creating a fake team to take up the offer."
Dev nodded. "We tried talking around our contact into playing the client, asked him to send in fake images of Jon bound and gagged." A shake of his head. "He's too terrified of the retaliation from his own team if they find out he's been feeding us intel. They don't know he's Forgotten."
"Shit." Lucas unfolded his arms before he clawed himself. "Contact details on the offer?"
"Throwaway e-mail address. No way to trace it--and we've tried."
"So what's the good news?" This time, he had enough of a snarl in his tone that Naya's ears pricked up, but she was soon distracted by Noor calling for her.
"No one is eager to take up the offer."
Lucas glanced at the leader of the Forgotten, his panther looking out of his eyes in disbelief. "Five million and no one's eager?"
"Our contact says his own group was considering it, and we have indications that two others were as well, but all of them pulled out last night." Dev's eyes glint
ed. "It was a stroke of genius to follow up your statement by leaking images of that bloody room where you executed the alpha who came after your cub."
It wasn't Lucas who'd leaked those photos. He hadn't even been aware they'd been taken. It had been one of the ocelot soldiers--the female. She hadn't done it in defiance or rebellion. No, she'd done it to make it clear to other changelings that the surviving ocelot dominants had witnessed the execution and that it had been a righteous one. Her act had been one of solidarity with her new alpha.
Despite her unauthorized actions, Lucas had to admit he liked the young ocelot. Especially when she accepted her punishment for those actions without complaining. He hadn't hurt her, but he had put her on the worst duty shifts for six months.
"Worth it, sir," she'd said when he'd shaken his head at her afterward. "I didn't want any rumors out there, just the cold, hard facts. You don't deserve to have anyone questioning your actions."
Hugging her against his chest, one hand cradling her head, Lucas had pressed a kiss to her hair. "You're going to be trouble, but it turns out this pack likes trouble."
She'd left with a dimpled smile, Rina by her side. The twenty-four-year-old DarkRiver soldier was helping the younger girl settle into the pack, and it wasn't a chance partnership. Rina had made more trouble than most of her yearmates combined before Lucas put Dorian in charge of her training and development. Faced with a trainer who accepted zero bullshit, she'd exceeded all expectations without losing the edginess that made her Rina.
Lucas knew she'd be good for the high-spirited ocelot soldier.
"A bloody room," he said to Dev now, "wouldn't normally put off the kind of mercenaries who kidnap children."
"Maybe not, but the idea of having their entrails clawed out and tied into knots in front of them, or having their dicks cut off while they scream, or their eyes plucked out before they're released, just so you can hunt them and tear them apart with your teeth, isn't sitting well with most. Especially when the failed attempt to snatch Naya has skewed the risk of capture into the 'ninety-nine-percent certainty' category."
Lucas stared at the other man. "Knotted entrails and dicks being cut off? Blinding people so I can hunt them?"
Cheeks creasing, Dev angled his head. "Yeah, I didn't think that was your style. Looks like someone's been embellishing on your behalf and doing a damn good job of it. You've now got a reputation as a scary motherfucker with no limits when it comes to your kid and your pack."
The Forgotten leader leaned back against a tree. "Oh, and the rumors make it clear you're also brutally intelligent and your pack has the smarts to dig out financial connections, no matter how deep a mercenary team might bury those connections in an effort to avoid retaliation."
Dev smiled at Naya when she padded over to growl playfully at them before making her way back to her playmates. "It's also gotten out that you confiscated the captured assault team's money--mercenaries hate working for free even more than they do being subjected to torture."
Lucas had put that money into a trust for the ocelot children, with the unanimous agreement of the adult ocelot survivors. He'd have put all four million of SkyElm's money into that trust, but the survivors had been adamant that they wanted to contribute to their new pack, so one million had gone into the DarkRiver fund used for the education of cubs.
None of the adults had wanted to take any of the remaining million, but he'd made each one accept an amount that would give them room to breathe while they settled into their new lives. The rest, at their request, would act as the capital for a scholarship for young inventors. Named the SkyElm Grant, it would ensure the pack's name lived on as part of something good, not simply in memories of horror.
"Huh," he said in response to Dev's revelations about his own apparent reputation for meting out horrific torture.
Lucas would savage the world for those who were his own--but he wasn't into torture. Never had been. Still, it was a useful reputation to have if it helped protect the most vulnerable members of DarkRiver. "That explains the sudden wary respect I'm seeing in the eyes of Psy corporations we're working with on business deals."
"Business gone down recently?"
"Up. Appears the Psy respect that kind of merciless retribution." Lucas smiled, his panther amused as it realized the identity of the person most likely behind his new reputation.
Nikita Duncan was more than deviously intelligent enough to figure out how to protect her daughter and grandchild long-term and what would scare even the most hardened men and women. The fact that his reputation would also protect other children was a side effect that wouldn't matter to her, but it mattered a heck of a lot to Lucas.
"So it's done?" Dev asked. "The trail ended with the ocelots?"
Lucas shook his head. "No, the alpha was just a useful weapon to point in our direction. Someone else was driving the operation." Hopefully, the captain of the ship Dorian had pinpointed would provide further intelligence.
Jamie was leading the op to intercept the ship in question, which involved taking a flight to one of BlackSea's floating cities in a craft capable of water landings. Miane had made one available for their use after DarkRiver and SnowDancer allied with her pack. From that point, Jamie would get on a BlackSea underwater craft and sneak up on the ship, then climb up and into it with a small team of water changelings.
It seemed an appropriate operation for a cat who'd taken up deep-sea diving.
"We'll get them," he said to Dev. "Sooner or later, we'll find the people pulling the strings." It was the unyielding promise of an alpha--and of a father.
Letters to Nina
From the private diaries of Father Xavier Perez
May 7, 2075
Nina,
He's trusted me with his name, the Psy soldier. I won't write it here--if my letters are ever found, I don't want to betray my friend.
I know you must be thinking that this is surely a double cross, that he'll betray me. I thought the same until I realized he had no reason to approach me, or to want me with him. I'm no one, a broken fragment of a lost village. At the time he and I first met, I was a drunk, a fool who was more hindrance than help.
No, my new friend had no reason to take me into his confidence except that he saw I needed a mission, a reason for being. In giving it to me, he has given me more than he'll ever know. For the first time in an eternity, I feel like Xavier again. I feel like the man I was before the day murder stained our village and I saw you jump into the water.
At times, I even glimpse the rare flame of hope.
Your Xavier
Chapter 34
IT WAS VASIC who Miane Leveque most often contacted now with updates on the Leila Savea situation and Zaira with whom the BlackSea alpha met with simply to talk--one dangerous woman to another, their friendship a growing thing. As leader of the Arrow Squad, Aden might've been expected to be dissatisfied with that state of affairs, but he felt the opposite: his mate and his best friend were building powerful bonds of their own.
Should the worst ever happen, should Aden be assassinated, Vasic would have the skills and contacts to step in and Zaira . . . No, Aden couldn't predict what Zaira would do except seek vengeance. And after that was done, he had the haunting conviction that she'd choose to join him. So he'd have to stay alive. That was all there was to it.
The thought echoed in his mind as he grabbed a handhold on a rock face not far from the RainFire aeries and swung over and up. A couple of meters from him, Remi, the alpha of the small leopard pack, was doing much the same. They were dressed similarly, too, in dark outdoor pants and T-shirts, boots on their feet and gloves on their hands; the only real difference was that Remi's T-shirt was white, Aden's olive green.
"So," Remi said, his biceps bulging as he attempted a particularly difficult crossing over a jagged gap in the rock face, "since the wolves are keeping Ming busy for now and Trinity hasn't collapsed, what's on your mind?"
Aden held his position until he saw that Remi had made it safely. T
hey were climbing separately but acting as each other's spotters, ready to send out an alert in case of an accident. Such an accident was highly unlikely, not with Remi having claws with which he could hook into every tiny crevice and Aden a far more careful climber than his more instinctive friend. However, taking things for granted got people--and Arrows--killed.
"Did you know BlackSea holds regular gatherings of its people?" he asked after they'd both begun climbing again. "They come from every corner of the globe." He pushed off with his feet, caught an overhang, kicked up so that he was in a crouched position vertically for a second before he managed to get himself on the overhang and ready for the next part of the climb.
Remi whistled. "Nice move."
"Zaira taught me that one." His lover was currently "cat climbing" the internal RainFire rock wall. She'd been press-ganged into it by the smaller, less powerful cats who wanted to know how she did it without claws.
Them, Zaira could've resisted. But when little Jojo had jumped up and down at the idea of watching Zaira do another climb, well, his tough commander had a mile-wide vulnerable streak there. How's the climb going? he telepathed to her, the connection flawless at this range.
Fairly uneventful. I threw in a semi-slip to make it more exciting, but now that I've done it once, it's not a true challenge.
Because Zaira climbed as much with her mind as with her body, would've remembered every grip, every successful move. Don't show up the cats too badly.
Soft laughter along the black-on-black bond that connected them, his lover's firelight hidden within the black. The entire squad needed her fire, thrived on it, whether she accepted her importance or not.
Their honor is safe with me. Zaira rarely laughed aloud, but mind to mind, he was becoming addicted to the sound of her happiness. Are you done?
Halfway.
They disconnected without need for good-byes. He and Zaira lived in each other's minds, never intrusive, just . . . present. He loved being able to feel her blade of a mind at the edge of his consciousness, liked knowing that should she need him, he could respond within split seconds.