Shield of Winter (Nalini Singh) (16 page)

Vasic catalogued the expression in a private mental folder in which he’d begun to collect even the tiniest details about Ivy. It was a small madness, and one of which no one need be aware. “He didn’t, did he?” Cowards who attacked the defenseless and the vulnerable did not last long against Ivy’s kind of honest strength.

“No,” she confirmed, her voice steeped in disgust. “He knew what he was doing was wrong, and I knew never to be caught alone with him.” Cuddling Rabbit, she shot Vasic a fierce grin. “The cat was fine—and it scratched him hard across the cheek before it ran off.”

Vasic watched the vivid play of emotions on her face in a vain attempt to know every nuance of her. When color touched her cheekbones, her lashes coming down to veil her eyes, he realized he’d stared for too long, but he didn’t shift his gaze. “Why are you disappointed with your reactions to the other empaths?”

“It’s just . . . I don’t know.” Her shoulders slumped beneath the autumn orange of her cardigan. “I guess I thought there’d be an instant connection between us all.”

“Telepaths, telekinetics, none of us feel any kind of an immediate connection with one another.” Vasic handled a telepathic security check- in by his sentries even as he spoke. “Why should it be different for empaths?”

She made a face, brow heavy. “I didn’t say it was logical,” she muttered, as her pet jumped off the porch to walk to the center of the snowy clearing.

A small beep came from inside the cabin a second later to indicate the cooking cycle was complete on whatever meal Ivy was making, the machine now in the process of turning itself off. Ignoring it, she said, “You know something else?”

Adding another mental image to his private file of Ivy, who he did not understand and whose actions he couldn’t predict, he said, “What?”

“I made a decision to go forward, to not be chained by the past.” Her shoulders grew stiff. “A sensible choice, good for my mental health.”

“And now you find you feel anger.” There was no way to mistake the violence of emotion that was white lines around her mouth, rigid tendons on her neck, a barely controlled vibration in her voice.

“Rage,” Ivy said, “that’s what I feel when I think of what they did to me in that reconditioning room.” Jaw clenched so tight that Ivy could hear her bones grinding against one another, she spoke through the brutal roar in her ears. “They
hurt
me. Not the pain, though that was bad, but what they did to who I was. I’ll never again be the same Ivy who walked into that torture chamber.”

Vasic’s gaze—intense, unwavering, opaque—continued to hold hers. “You were once a girl who fought off a bully with a branch. Now you’re a woman about to fight for the survival of your race. What did you lose?”

Ivy stared at him. Then, picking up some salad in her hand, she threw it at his head. It froze in midair to float gently back into her bowl. His control further infuriated her. “What did I
lose
?” she said through gritted teeth. “I used to be
happy
, to see the world as a good place. I lost that innocence.”

Vasic took his time answering. “An innocent could not be here, could not attempt to do what you must. For this, the Net needs a warrior.”

Her pulsing anger didn’t lessen, too huge and too old a thing. It needed a target, but the people who’d hurt her weren’t here and this infuriating Arrow had just called her a warrior by implication. “I don’t understand you,” she said an instant before hot pokers lanced through her brain.

“There’s noth—” Vasic’s head snapped up at the tiny cry of pain that escaped her lips. “Ivy, what is it?”
Ivy.

Vision blurring, she gripped the sides of her viciously pounding head.
Something’s wrong.
Her mouth couldn’t shape the words, her tongue thick and her heart a freight train.
I can’t . . .

Vasic scented iron, rich and wet, before he saw the crimson-black droplets roll down Ivy’s neck. She was bleeding from one ear.
Drop your shields.
Blood began to trickle like tears over her cheeks.
I need to see what’s happening.

No argument, her shields going down in an act of trust so staggering, Vasic couldn’t think about it if he was to function. Having already thrown his own shields around her, he scanned the surface of her mind to see countless ruptures, the mental landscape akin to a landmass ravaged by a major quake. “I’ll be back in seconds,” he said to her, so she’d know he wasn’t abandoning her, then made himself go.

Ivy was hunched over shaking when he returned with Aden. Rabbit, having run back to the porch, nudged at her with his nose, a low whine escaping the dog’s throat. “I need entry,” Aden said to Vasic, after evaluating the situation in a single glance.

Vasic slid open the shield he’d slammed around Ivy’s otherwise naked mind only long enough for Aden to slip in, then crouched down in front of her. Though physical contact wasn’t something with which he was comfortable, he gripped her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze. So close, he couldn’t miss that her eyes were bloodshot, her pupils hugely dilated.

Aden is the medic I told you about,
he telepathed.
The lock placed on you during the reconditioning has collapsed. Aden is removing the broken shards.
Those shards were shoving into her brain itself, could cause irreversible damage if not extracted at once—and with extreme care.

Uncontrolled.
It was a faint telepathic sound as her bloody tears dripped to the fists she’d braced on her thighs.

Yes.
Ivy’s scheduled operation had been meant to head off exactly this type of vicious, unpredictable fragmentation.
Don’t be concerned. Aden is gifted at such delicate work.

Ivy’s hand closed around his wrist, slippery with blood.
I’m scared.

Vasic hadn’t experienced fear since he was a child, the emotional resonance long since faded. Now, however, he could physically sense Ivy’s fear in the stutter of her pulse, the shallowness of her breath, the shaken tone of her mental voice, and it tore at things long dead inside him.
Aden will cause you no harm.

An instant of startling clarity in the crimson copper.
He’s your brother.

Not genetically, but yes.

Her head dropped, her hand spasming to fall off his wrist.

Having caught her instinctively with his telekinesis so she wouldn’t wrench her neck, he shifted close enough that her cheek could rest against his shoulder.
Aden.
The speed with which she’d lost consciousness was not a good sign.

There are multiple fine shards already embedded in her brain.

Chapter 15

KEEPING HIS SILENCE
while his partner worked with meticulous patience, Vasic didn’t move so as not to cause any inadvertent damage. Part of him knew he could’ve achieved the same aim using telekinesis, but he chose to ignore that voice in favor of feeling Ivy’s determination to live in the soft, warm air against his neck that was her breath.

“It’s done,” Aden said an hour later, pushing back his sweat-damp hair from his face. “You’ll need to shield her until she’s conscious and capable of doing it herself.”

“Prognosis?” Vasic would accept only one answer—no one this rare and vivid was meant to die.

Aden shook his head. “Hard to predict. If she wakes, she’ll have come through the worst of it. Whether she wakes will depend on her own internal strength.”

“Then she’ll live.” Ivy had come back once from far worse. She’d do it again.

This time Vasic did use Tk to lift her, not wanting to risk jarring her brain. Placing her gently on her bed, he found a washcloth and wiped away the blood on her face and her hands. Rabbit didn’t growl at him, simply watched until he was done, then jumped on the bed. Pulling a blanket over Ivy’s body, her skin cool to the touch when he checked her pulse, Vasic left her with her pet curled up beside her.

“Will there be any side effects?” he asked Aden once he was outside, the sight of Ivy’s deserted bowl of salad causing him inexplicable discomfort until he gave in and teleported it away.

Aden didn’t reiterate his earlier cautious prognosis. “Unless she reacts in an unforeseen fashion,” he said, “there should be none other than headaches caused by residual bruising. Those should pass within forty-eight hours.” A pause. “I should say no side effects beyond the obvious.”

Ivy’s E ability, Vasic thought, was now wide open. “We’ll need Sascha Duncan’s assistance earlier th—”

A scream tore through the compound.

“Go,” Aden said to him. “I’ll keep watch on Ivy.”

Vasic ’ported to the origin of the scream—the cabin belonging to the empath Lianne—but didn’t step inside.
Stay at your posts
, he ordered his team, and attempted to contact Cristabel, the Arrow assigned to Lianne.

No response.

Listening with all of his senses, he heard only the rasping, unsteady breath of someone who was badly injured.
I’m entering the cabin,
he told Aden automatically, all Arrows trained to alert backup if it was available.

Lianne lay slumped at the table where she’d been eating her dinner. Cristabel was on the floor, blood pooling below her shoulder and head, while an unknown male of medium height and slight build lay against the opposite wall. A small round hole indicative of a precision laser shot marred the center of his forehead, his eyes staring in death.

Lianne’s skin was clammy, but she didn’t seem in any imminent danger. Cristabel’s pulse, however, was thready at best. It was her breathing he’d heard, a faint rattling in her lungs that told him they could lose her.
Aden, in here.
He switched telepathic channels.
Abbot, cover Ivy as well as your charge.

Sir.

He continued to monitor Ivy on the telepathic level even as he gave those orders. Aden ran into the cabin the second after Abbot’s response. Aden took one look at Cristabel and said, “Clinic.”

Ready, Vasic took them directly to the private medical facility Aden had set up after it became clear that the Council medics’ orders included getting rid of “broken” or “under performing” members of the squad. All three of the highly trained staff at this clinic were alive because an Arrow hadn’t carried out an assassination order while making it appear otherwise. Each was blood-loyal to the squad.

Leaving Aden to supervise the medical procedures—because regardless of their trust in the staff, no Arrow would leave an injured comrade at the mercy of anyone who wasn’t a member of the squad—Vasic returned to Lianne’s cabin to find her stirring. He transferred her to the Arrow cabin, setting up a cot and putting her on it before she opened her eyes.

Then he turned on the light.

Blinking, she squinted as if it hurt her eyes. “Ray?”

“Who is Ray?” Vasic asked, not concerned with the ethics of interrogating her while she was disoriented. He needed to know how anyone, even a teleporter, had managed to get inside the compound and into her cabin.

Lianne curled into a fetal position on the camouflage green of the cot. “My cousin,” she said, her voice a little slurred. “Why is he here?”

That was the question.

Initiating a medical program on his gauntlet, he scanned the dazed empath and detected a mild concussion, possibly from having her head slammed against the top of the table where he’d found her. Sending Aden the data so his partner could evaluate her condition, Vasic waited for a reply to come in before he left to return to the scene. He’d record it later using his gauntlet in case a re-creation was necessary, and take blood samples, but his military-trained mind told him exactly what had happened.

That theory was confirmed when he stepped outside and made use of his connection with Judd to ask if the SnowDancer-DarkRiver satellite surveillance had picked up an extra body in the vicinity in the past hour.

“No. The last new entry came in with you a little earlier—I’m judging that from the speed of the ’port noted in the file.”

That would’ve been Aden. Hanging up without thanking Judd for the information because such was understood among members of the squad, he considered what he’d found in Lianne’s cabin. Ray had teleported directly
inside
, which meant he was either part of the rare telekinetic subset that could lock onto people as well as places, or he’d had an image file to use as a lock. Vasic’s bet was on an image leak. Teleporters who could lock onto people were extremely rare and Vasic knew—or knew of—most of them.

Aden’s reply came in at that instant, the message showing up directly on the gauntlet’s small screen:
She doesn’t need medical attention. Just keep an eye on her and alert me if she exhibits any of the following symptoms.
Below was a concise list.

Assigning the task to another Arrow, Vasic returned to Lianne’s cabin. A scan indicated no computronic devices other than the wall-set comm and Lianne’s sleek personal phone. He judged that if the empath had broken the rules, she’d have done it via her private device; picking it up, he circumvented the security key using a simple algorithm sent through his gauntlet.

It took him under ten seconds to discover that Lianne had been uploading hourly updates to a private family server. Not only a breach of confidentiality, but also of safety—because she’d uploaded photos. Scanning the images, he realized the exterior of the compound was now of higher priority than the interior of Lianne’s cabin.