Did you get what we need?
Looking up at the sound of Vasic's telepathic voice, having ignored him during the fight, she gave him an affirmative. "Get him to a hospital and contact the authorities," she said aloud for the benefit of their audience. "The threat has been neutralized." I have Persephone's last known location. We'll go as soon as you 'port back.
While Vasic took care of the body, she slipped the knife back into place and picked up the scanner she'd dropped. Then she walked deliberately toward the crowd. The onlookers parted in front of her, mingled fear and awe in their expressions. "Where's the gun?" she asked the human couple.
The man held it out to her, hand trembling. "I picked it up when you made him drop it."
Zaira knew that, had seen him do it and never forgotten the gun that could be turned against her. "Thank you. You minimized the risk to others."
A shaky smile. "You're an extraordinary young woman. Isn't she, dear?"
"Oh, yes," his mate replied with a beaming smile. "Why, that horrible man might have hurt us if she hadn't been there."
Not sure how to respond to that unexpected statement, Zaira turned to Vasic as the teleporter returned. The valley first. We need more weapons and people.
Chapter 77
THE LOCATION THE shooter had given her for Persephone turned out to be a shipping yard owned by a human magnate. Locked and gated, barbed-wire fence above the chain-link, the premises also had electronic surveillance, guards, and dogs. None of those were enough to stop a team of Arrows determined to get in, especially under cover of the night that had fallen in this part of the world.
While Mica took care of the electronics and Vasic silently stunned the guards into unconsciousness, another member of Zaira's team made sure the dogs were asleep. The sedative-laced meat they'd brought in after an initial reconnaissance had worked exactly as planned--the animals would be fine when they woke. No need to penalize them for the crimes of their master.
Going in ahead of the others while they cleaned up all suspicious signs, including hiding the unconscious guards, Zaira found a good position on the hulk of a ship being built and, putting the laser binoculars to her eyes, looked into the central building that functioned as the headquarters of the company.
It had six levels, was mostly glass and lit up like the Christmas tree she'd seen once in Times Square. That made it ridiculously simple to work out how many people were still inside. "Five," she murmured to Vasic and Mica when they appeared by her side. "Three on level two, one on level five, the last on level six." She increased the magnification on the binoculars. "I think level six is the CEO."
Mica took the binoculars. "Confirmed. I double-checked his image before we left." He glanced at Zaira. "We need him alive, yes?"
"Yes." She broke down and put away the binoculars into a pocket of her combat pants. "Persephone was taken to a basement level." And left there to die, according to the shooter. "Mica, you take the others and clear the building above. Vasic and I will head below."
It was stupidly simple to get in, the CEO apparently smug in his belief that his guards and dogs and fences would keep people out. The actual locks on the main doors were pathetic. But the ones on the doors going down to the basement? Those were significant.
They were also electronic, so she and Vasic couldn't simply break them.
"I can pull the door off its hinges," Vasic said to her. "It may be noisy."
"Wait." Touching base with Mica, she checked his progress. "Don't worry about noise. Mica has the CEO, and the other workers are corralled."
A shuddering groan as the metal door bent and bent before being torn away from the hinges. Placing it carefully against the wall, Vasic didn't attempt to take the lead position down the stairs. He knew as well as Zaira that this was her mission. If she'd failed Persephone, then she wouldn't hide from it.
Heart tight and head still an echoing aloneness, she spoke to Aden anyway. We're heading into the basement. There's some lighting, but it's very dim. And the smell--bad. Bad enough that it might come from a body that had just begun to decompose. It's cold, too, but that's okay. That's actually good. Miane told me Persephone came from colder waters, that it's heat that's her enemy.
No response, but it made her feel better regardless. Because as long as she talked to him, he wasn't dead, couldn't be gone.
We've reached the bottom. The space is sprawling. Pockets of shadow pooled in the corners, but it was obvious the large open space filled with weapons and other supplies was empty of living beings. She and Vasic swept it anyway. There are rooms at the end. Cells.
Her anger burning ice in her blood, she stepped toward the first cage, looked inside. It's too dark, she telepathed to Vasic. I'm going to shine in my flashlight. Shield your eyes. Careful to angle her own eyes in a way that meant it wouldn't blind her, she shone the light within.
A startled hand went up, the thin man on the cot beyond looking at her with drug-hazed eyes, his skin yellow. Zaira switched off the light, her heart thudding. That's one of the missing BlackSea people, she told Vasic. His facial features are distinctive even under the new scarring.
We can't release him yet, the teleporter said. We need more people if we're going to be freeing drugged hostages.
Zaira nodded. Much as it infuriated her to see anyone in a cage, Vasic was right. The hostage could hurt himself or others in his current state. Walking on, she shone the light into the next cage.
This one proved empty, the cot neatly made.
Two more were occupied, one by a woman, the second by another man. The woman was another BlackSea changeling and she had the Halcyon pallor, but the older black man asleep in the other cot wasn't a sea changeling.
I recognize him, Vasic said unexpectedly just as her fully charged flashlight began to flicker. He was a Council scientist. Specialist in explosives, I think.
There was only one more cell left.
Gut churning and nausea shoving at her throat, she took a deep breath and shone the malfunctioning light through the narrow window. A tiny body lay under a thin blanket. Anger and sadness tore through Zaira . . . then just before the flashlight blinked off, the blanket moved. Shallow, so shallow, but it was a breath. "Vasic!"
"Move back. I didn't see enough to get a teleport lock." He wrenched the door off its hinges in a heartbeat and Zaira ran in to find the tiny little girl startled awake.
Terror filled her small, thin face.
Zaira didn't know what to do, so she did what she'd always wanted someone to do for her as a child. She gathered that thin, scared body into her arms and said, "You're safe. No one will hurt you anymore." Her eyes met Vasic's.
There was no need for any further words.
He teleported them directly to the floating city where they'd been guests less than three days prior. Guns clicked around them as slanting rain plastered their hair and clothing to their bodies, but then there was a cry to get Miane and Olivia, running feet on the city that swayed slightly with the motion of the crashing, storm-lashed sea.
Zaira was startled when thin arms locked tight around her neck, Persephone's heart racing fast. "Shh," she whispered. "You're home. Mommy's coming."
"Mommy?" the child whispered, and then she said, "Mommy!" in a thin but joyous shout, having glimpsed Olivia racing toward her.
Passing over her precious burden to the crying woman, who covered her child's face in kisses, she was about to tell Miane about the other hostages when Olivia ran to the edge of the platform on which they stood and jumped straight into the cold, crashing water. Zaira moved instinctively to go after her but Miane got in her way.
"The child needs to shift," the alpha reminded her. "She needs the sea more than food, more than rest, more than anything aside from her mother."
Eyes wide, Zaira went to the edge of the platform and looked down. Aden, I can't describe it, she said in wonder, barely able to glimpse the truth below the crashing foam of the waves. There's a glow, streamers of the softest, most beautiful light. I
don't know what they shifted into, but they're extraordinarily beautiful. Like glimpses of a dream.
Stepping away reluctantly when the lights faded, as if going into the deep, she turned to Miane. "We've found two more of your people. They'll need you."
*
ADEN was still in surgery when she and Vasic returned to the now clean infirmary corridor, both of them having taken two minutes to change into dry clothes because Ivy had pointed out that their getting sick right now wouldn't help Aden. The empath had been at the valley when they returned to give Cristabel and the others a quick update.
By then, Vasic had already teleported Miane's people to the floating city, trusting her word that she'd share any useful data the captives remembered, while Mica was debriefing the scientist. He was in much better condition than the others they'd rescued--probably because his captors intended to use him long-term--and made it clear he'd be happy to talk once he'd had a chance to shower.
The CEO was in a black cell deep in Central Command.
"Do you need to go and further question the CEO?" she asked Vasic. As a human, the CEO had weak shields, though a Psy had clearly bolstered them somewhat. Still, they'd been easy enough to dismantle without causing damage. As a result, Zaira was cataloguing his memories and secrets even as she sat waiting for Aden to wake up.
"No," Vasic said. "He has no time-sensitive data and the two of us can give orders from here as we come across useful information from our deep scan of his mind." The teleporter stood with her in silence for over twenty minutes before saying, "Aden was here two months ago with Ivy."
"Your arm?"
"He stayed with Ivy throughout. She says that without him, she might have gone mad."
Zaira stared down the corridor. She wasn't like Ivy, wasn't comfortable with many people, rarely made connections. But Vasic was Aden's best friend and even when she'd seen him as a competitor for Aden's attention, she'd also always seen the loyal friend who'd stood by Aden through everything, and whom Aden would trust with all that mattered most to him.
Including Zaira.
"I can't lose him." Her every breath hurt, her chest was so tight. "He's a better person than anyone I've ever met, ever heard about. We need him. I need him." He made her feel as if she was all right exactly as she was, as if there was nothing wrong with her.
"Aden has a single deep flaw."
The only reason Zaira didn't turn on Vasic in violence for daring to say that was that she knew he'd never disparage Aden. "A flaw?"
"He has no capacity to care for himself," Vasic said. "He believes everyone else is more important and that's what makes him a great leader. But he needs someone to watch over him, to make sure he doesn't lose himself in his responsibilities."
"I know." Aden was her priority, her everything.
"Zaira."
She met Vasic's gaze ten minutes after they'd last spoken. "What?" It was a single angry word. If Aden died, she would find the door to the afterlife and drag him back out. How dare he think to leave her?
"Drink this." Vasic handed her an energy drink. "Aden will forgive neither one of us if he wakes to find you weak and exhausted."
She gulped down the drink, got up, began pacing, the rage creature angry and sad and scared. So scared. "How did he learn what he could do?" she asked just to fill her mind with something else. "What the mirror could do?"
She'd meant to ask him a hundred times, but somehow they'd never spoken of it. "He told me about Walker, how Walker taught him to shield." She paused. "Does Walker know?" That Aden was wounded, fighting for his life. "Aden would want him to know."
Vasic's winter-frost eyes darkened. "I'll go find him."
"Wait. Don't bring Marjorie and Naoshi," Zaira ordered, knowing Aden wouldn't want his parents to see him when he wasn't at full strength.
Walker was different.
Zaira didn't understand parental or maternal connections, but she'd felt Aden's emotions for Walker, knew the other man held a deeply trusted place in his life.
"No," Vasic agreed before leaving.
It took him precisely seven minutes to return with Walker Lauren. Zaira knew because she kept looking at her timepiece and calculating how long Aden had been in surgery. Too long.
Chapter 78
WALKER'S FACE WAS grim, his pale green eyes hard as he processed what Vasic had just told him. And yet, despite his obvious anger and worry, his presence was oddly stabilizing. Just like Aden's in similar situations. Father and son, Zaira thought.
Genetics didn't matter here. Walker and Aden had chosen their relationship.
Shoving up the sleeves of his blue shirt, Walker began to walk with Zaira, and when she asked him about Aden's abilities, he said, "I met him as a boy of six. So calm and strong and determined, and with the beginnings of what we named the mirror."
"You helped him shield it."
"At first, I simply grasped the subtlety of his telepathy," Walker said. "You know what he can do with it?"
"Yes, the Amplification Effect." Because Aden had two abilities close to the midrange, he could amplify one to a higher Gradient. Not everyone with two midlevel abilities could do it, but in his case, the effect pushed his telepathy into the 8.3 range.
"No one even considered him capable of it because his M abilities register at 3.2. That's extremely low for amplification."
Zaira knew all this, but she didn't care. Having Walker talk about Aden while Vasic listened and she asked further questions made Zaira feel as if they were surrounding Aden in their words, words that would remind him who he was to so many people, words that would hold him here. "He didn't think he could do it himself, not until you taught him."
"I recognized him, in a sense." Walker frowned. "His telepathy is like mine in that it's . . . quiet. That's taken as weak by some when the opposite is true--trained correctly, we can work with such stealth that no one notices our intrusion." He ran a hand through the dark blond strands of his hair, faint glints of silver catching the light.
"But it was the mirror that was the critical thing--I realized that at once as soon as I saw it, though it took me months to win his trust enough that he lowered his shields so we could work on the psychic level." Walker would never forget the boy Aden had been, so wary and careful. "Then, the mirror was embryonic, hardly visible. It was why he hadn't already been discovered."
"He once told me he began to trust you the second week of class," Vasic said quietly. "A child broke down in tears during a reading session and instead of berating or punishing her, you wiped away her tears and read her part of the text for her."
Walker didn't remember that particular incident, but he'd dealt with many like it. "They were all so tired and hurt and tiny." He shook his head. "Aden was the same age, but he was already looking out for the others."
"When he wakes," Zaira said, her voice fierce, "I'll allow him no arguments. I'm doing the looking after even if I have to tie him up."
"I'll help you with the rope," Vasic said.
Walker looked across to the teleporter. "Aden didn't know what the mirror was as a child and neither did I." All he'd known was that it was unique and that it sang of power. Instinct had told him he needed to teach Aden to hide it so the boy wouldn't be forced to use it for those who had less integrity in their entire adult bodies than Aden had in his littlest finger. "When did he figure it out?"
"We were twelve," Vasic said. "Aden was in anti-interrogation training."
Translation: he was being tortured.
Zaira's teeth ground down, hands fisted. Sensing Walker's tension, she realized he, too, had understood the truth behind Vasic's words.
"The trainer made a mistake," the teleporter continued. "Aden realized the man was about to accidentally snap his neck. He couldn't stop him telepathically, not with his abilities leashed, so he says he instinctively reached for power." Vasic's tone was so even, Zaira knew he had vicious control on himself. "I felt him and didn't resist the power draw. I knew Aden would never do something like that
unless he was in danger."
And that, Zaira thought, was why she had always trusted Vasic. Even when she'd been jealous of him, she'd known he wouldn't hesitate to stand with Aden against any threat.
"The trainer didn't realize Aden had gained strength?"
Vasic shook his head at Walker's question. "My telekinesis gave him the power to twist out of the trainer's hold. That sudden strength was attributed to a surge of adrenaline at being in danger."
Zaira heard Walker and Vasic continue to talk, but her mind, it kept searching for Aden. Her chest got tighter and tighter with every failure to connect. Don't you leave me alone, she commanded him again. Don't you go.
A warm weight on her hair, Walker's hand on the back of her head. "He's strong," the older telepath said. "Stubborn, too."
She didn't know why, but his calm tone, paired with the open emotion in his voice, smashed through her defenses. Maybe it was because of Aden's memories of him, but she didn't resist when he drew her into his arms, standing scared and angry and waiting against the warmth of him.
You finally won our argument, she said along the dead psychic pathway. I chose to be better than my past today. Wake up so you can savor your victory.
No response. Nothing but a blankness that made ice form in her blood, and the rage build again. Pulling away from Walker, she began to pace the corridor for what seemed an eternity.
And then she reached out to Aden . . . and his mind caught her own.
Twisting around as her blood thundered, she ran into the operating theater. A drained-appearing Judd was slumped against a wall, the doctor and nurses looking as tired, but Zaira's focus was on Aden. To her shock, he pulled himself into a seated position as she watched. He was paler than he should've been, the skin at his neck appearing delicate and new, but he was conscious and unhurt and she could feel the wonderfulness of him inside her mind.
Opening his arms, he hauled her close. She held on tight, her heart squeezing so hard inside her chest that it hurt, her breath stuck in her lungs. She didn't care about that, or about the others in the room, leaving that to Aden.
He would watch her back. He always had.
*