Elite: A Hunter novel (24 page)

But that made no sense either. There’s not a lot you could do with a captive Ogre. And the Psimon would have known that the mate was down here too. A Psimon might take control of one mind, but never two. Oh, Psimons who’ve been particularly bold—and stupid—have tried in the past, but the result has always been fatal for the Psimon, as both “subjects” broke free and objected to being controlled in a very bloody manner.

And no, that was not the case here, because just like the first Psimon, this one hadn’t a mark on her. An Ogre would certainly have bashed her about, and then probably ripped a limb or two off for a snack, even if it wasn’t particularly hungry.

I studied the body for as long as I thought I could get away with it, and surreptitiously took some vid with my Perscom.

Then I called it in. And
that
was when I belatedly remembered what Josh had told me about how to ID a Psimon. I aimed my Perscom at her, and I
maybe
got a weak signal, but I didn’t dare get any closer.

Just as before, I was told to exit the sewer. And just as before, the same stone-faced senior Psimon met me when I came out of the little bunker that sealed off the entrance. I thought he’d given me the stink-eye before, but that was nothing compared to the cold glare he gave me now.

“You touched nothing?” the Psimon asked me sharply.

I shook my head. “My Hounds stumbled over the victim, but I called them back, and I don’t think they muddled the scene much.”

The Psimon snorted. “I’m not concerned about
Hounds
,” he said, inflecting the word in a way that made me think he equated them with dogs. “As long as you didn’t meddle with the…victim…that is satisfactory.”

That is
satisfactory
? Is that how you talk about a dead—possibly
murdered
—comrade when you’re a Psimon?
I’d thought this guy was creepy-cold before, now I figured he must have ice water for blood, and every single emotion cauterized. And I really, really did not like the way he was looking at me. Like he was looking at someone he considered to be inconvenient…or was considering me as a possible scapegoat. I was glad now I hadn’t gotten any closer to the body.

And the way he’d hesitated before he said the word “victim” had all my suspicion nerves tingling.

I’d better go to the expected response.

“I’m sorry for your loss. I’m sure the Psimon was a valuable member of your community and will be remembered fondly and missed,” I said flatly, and called for a pod.
His
pod was already there, and once again, he didn’t bother to offer me a lift. Then again, I would have turned it down if he had. I don’t think I could have stood to be confined in the small interior of a pod with this guy.

“Thank you,” he replied, just as flatly. “The same conditions apply as last time, Elite Hunter. You will speak to no one about this.”

Funny, it didn’t seem to have occurred to him that if someone—like my uncle—who ranked above both of us were to order me to talk, then I’d have to talk.

Okay. Maybe he’s just making sure I don’t gossip….No, he specifically said “no one.” Which would mean…no one. Not even Uncle. This isn’t good.
I was getting a very creepy vibe off this Psimon, creepier than normal, that is. It felt as if he had been willing to accept I had discovered
one
dead Psimon by chance, but accepting I’d found two “by chance” was just not going to happen. So now, I was about to come under the magnifying glass.

I picked my single-word reply very, very carefully, just in case my Psi-shield
and
my mantra failed me. “Understood,” I said. Which was absolutely true. I
did
understand. I didn’t intend to obey him, but I certainly did understand.

He took that at face value and got into his pod and left just as mine arrived. I was actually so relieved to be away from him that all I did in the pod was sit back in the cushions and just not think about anything.

I waited until I was back at HQ, I had made my report, and was sitting in my own rooms to view the vid footage. I thought about putting the footage up on my vid-screen, then thought better of the idea. If, somehow, PsiCorps was having me monitored, anything I threw up on the big screen might be visible to someone else, so I kept it on my Perscom.

From all I could see, it still looked as if the Psimon had simply strolled down there and dropped stone dead. No marks on her. No sign of a struggle. No sign she was
brought
there. No scuff marks on the wall, no drag marks on the bottom of the tunnel. That pose she was in still looked exactly as if her knees had folded up under her and she’d collapsed straight down. Her hair—

Wait a minute—

I zoomed the tiny view on my Perscom in on her head. Okay, this was odd. Her hair was white. And not white-blond, or some sort of bleached white, the way Dazzle’s hair was pink. No, this was old-lady white. And what I could make out of her face was wrinkled, with that delicate, fragile look that the skin of old people gets.

She was
old
! And…thin. Now that I looked at her closely, her clothing fit a little too loosely on her, and under it, she seemed little more than skin and bones. And sure, someone that old and frail could easily have dropped dead…but
how had she gotten down there in the first place
if she was that old and fragile?

I’d never seen an old Psimon. Hunters, if they lived that long, retired to become teachers of Hunters and emergency backup, but what happened to old Psimons? Did they retire? Did they keep working in some lesser capacity? Did their Powers get
stronger
as they got older, rather than weaker, so sending one alone into a sewer tunnel to track something dangerous was actually a reasonable thing to do?

Or…what if PsiCorps didn’t want old Psimons around? Holy crap, was this what PsiCorps did with its elderly? Dumped them down in the sewers and let them wander till they died?

Had the first victim been old? I couldn’t remember.
I’ll have to ask Uncle,
I thought.
But he might not know.
Did I have vid of the first body? I couldn’t recall taking any, but I couldn’t recall
not
taking any. I’d have to search back through the Perscom memory to find it. All this had my guts in knots and the hair on the back of my neck standing up. I could ask Myrrdhin, but he might not remember either; my Hounds had funny memories when it came to people, as if what we looked like on the outside didn’t matter all that much to them.

The next thought I had was an odd one.
Should I tell Josh about this?
If someone was murdering Psimons without a trace, he had a right to know. But if someone was just kidnapping elderly Psimons and dumping them in the storm sewers to wander around until they dropped dead…well, maybe he still ought to know. Unless he already knew and wasn’t telling me about it, and if I told
him
, then this was just turning into one big hot mess.

My Perscom alarm went off, reminding me that I had a training session with Hammer and Steel and Mark. If I didn’t want to attract PsiCorps attention, I had better act normally. I drank down a protein drink from my cool-box, changed into workout clothes, and headed for the session.

“Damn, boy,” Hammer said, bent over his knees, and panting as if he had been running for miles. “I think you’re ready.” He glanced over at the armorer, who was leaning up against the wall with me, both of us in the same, near-identical pose, with our arms crossed over our chests. “Whaddya think, Kent?”

“Ready enough,” the armorer said as I did my best not to show my glee. “Ready enough to pass, as long as he doesn’t screw up.”

Knight looked from Hammer to Kent and back again, as if he thought they were joking. “Really?” he managed at last. “Seriously?”

The armorer shook his head. “Would I have said so if I didn’t think you were? Yes. Really. Seriously. I’ve had the arena set up and waiting for the last week. Do
you
want more time to prepare, or would you rather get it over with as soon as possible?”

“Get it over with? Tomorrow?” Knight breathed, as if he was still afraid that Kent would say no.

“Certainly.” Kent pushed off the wall and walked over to him, slapping him on the back. It was hard enough to stagger most people. Mark didn’t move an inch. “I’ll get it scheduled. Unless there’s a full-team callout, your Trials will be the first thing in the morning.”

Mark whooped, and then grabbed the armorer’s hand and shook it like a balky pump handle, babbling his thanks. It kind of surprised me, actually. Mark was always so reserved and so rarely showed any emotion at all, that this was…astonishing.
I guess he really
does
love that girl of his,
was all I could think.

“I hope she’s worth it,” Kent observed, with a slight smile, echoing my thoughts.

“Oh, she is, sir, she is. We’ve known each other since we were kids, and I’ve never…” Mark seemed to realize that he was gushing at that point and reined himself back in, becoming the restrained White Knight I recognized. “I mean, she’s a fine young woman, sir. No doubt about that.”

Now we’ll just have to see how the girl feels about
him. Hopefully the same. Hopefully she wasn’t some minx who’d enjoy pulling his strings because that was the only sort of power or control a good little Christer girl had. I’d seen things turn out
that
way a time or two among the Christers….

Don’t borrow trouble,
I reminded myself. Even though I could think of oh, so many ways this could go
horribly
wrong for Knight.

Not that I could claim things didn’t go wrong for my own people when it came to romance.

So yeah, I shouldn’t judge.

Even though I was probably going to, anyway.

All the while I was thinking these things, though, I was also really happy for Mark and not just because I was pretty certain that while Kent was going to make him work for it, he’d pass the Trials. And I was happy for the rest of us on the Elite team too. He actually was Elite material. He’d have to work real hard to get up to speed with the rest of us, but I already knew he’d do that. It wasn’t in him to slack off. I was coming to understand that Elite was more of a state of mind than it was the level of power.

And also that becoming Elite and being thrown into things you thought you couldn’t handle tended to make you rise to the occasion, fast. Kent never, ever hung someone out to dry and never left someone to cope with something when they really couldn’t.

But he pushes, and pushes,
I realized.
Since there’re no fans to please, he keeps raising the bar for me, and I bet he does that for everyone, until he finally does find your real limits.
If I’d known he was going to do that, I would have been scared, I think. Since I was just now figuring it out, I was more comfortable with it.

“It’s about time, layabout,” I said when it was my turn to congratulate him, and I punched him in the arm and we both grinned. “Go get some sleep. And hydrate. And don’t forget the prep I did, and do the same. You are going to need every bit of energy you have, plus ten percent more to get through the whole show tomorrow.”

“Yes,
ma’am
,” he said, and saluted me. I punched him in the arm again.

It was extremely surreal to be on the
other
side of the arena the next morning. Needless to say, although nobody really thought that there would be an assassin lurking in the stands waiting to take down White Knight, nevertheless, under the mercilessly bright stadium lights at dawn, the entire Elite team
and
all our Hounds scoured those stands for anything bigger than a cockroach, and now that Knight was about to make his Trials, we had Apex PD snipers posted all around the top of the stadium, making sure no one else was going to sneak in once the Trials were started.

I was standing next to Retro; he was all done up in his skin-tight green and silver and gray “leather” outfit as usual—I don’t think it was real leather because leather doesn’t stretch
that
tight. He looked over at me and grinned.