Shield of Winter (Nalini Singh) (25 page)

Ivy hugged Jaya, both women now on their feet. Only when her fellow E had begun to walk toward her cabin did Ivy say,
Come over here and talk to me.
The demand held more than a hint of challenge, her arms folded defiantly across her chest.

Glancing at Abbot to see the other male was staring after Jaya, he said, “We’ll continue this discussion later.”

Abbot left without further words, his course set to intersect with Jaya’s. Striding across to his own E, Vasic stopped a foot from her. “Did my statement about your friend offend you?”

Arms still folded, Ivy narrowed her eyes. “You ever think about the fact that maybe it’s Jaya taking all the risks?” she demanded. “For all she knows, Abbot could turn around and say it’s too late for him.”

He heard the echo of his own words, knew it had been deliberate. “Abbot and I,” he said, “are not the same.”

“Why? You’re both telekinetics, went through the same training—”

“No.” Ivy had to understand that what she sought to see in him was simply not there. It was his fault—he’d been selfish, withheld the truth from her and stolen time, allowing things to go so far that she thought his hands were clean enough to touch her. “Abbot,” he said, “wasn’t inducted into the training program till he was ten.”

Frowning, she unfolded her arms. “But he’s a very strong Tk.”

“Abbot’s father was the same, and he not only took responsibility for his son, he held enough power to enforce his decision. It was only after his death that Abbot was claimed for the squad.” That had always been part of the problem—unlike many Arrows, Abbot had known what it was to be valued as an individual before he was thrust into a world where their leadership saw them as interchangeable pieces. Under Ming, an Arrow was valuable because of his training, but only until he began to malfunction.

“At ten,” he continued before Ivy could interrupt, “Abbot already had excellent psychic control. His father had made certain of that.” There was no question the younger Arrow had suffered considerable physical and psychological pain in the intervening years, but he hadn’t been tortured as a child.

The sudden contrast was one of the reasons why Abbot was so unstable. The shock of it had left jagged fractures in his psyche. “Abbot did eventually adjust to the change in his life,” he told Ivy, “and he’s an Arrow I would have at my back in a heartbeat, but he’s also fragile on a certain level. Jaya is the first person with whom he’s bonded emotionally since he lost his father.”

Copper-colored eyes watched him with a near-painful clarity. “Jaya is falling for him and she’s just as scared.” A lopsided smile. “You don’t have to worry about his heart.”

Vasic didn’t know anything about the heart, but Abbot was his responsibility. “Do you understand, Ivy?” he asked into the air filled with birdsong.

Abbot was damaged, but he’d had a foundation once, had been loved, even if only in the cold way of Silence. That fact had shaped his life . . . the same way Vasic’s total abandonment by his own father had shaped his. “I’m not like Abbot.” He’d been too young to fight the torture, and it had broken him. “I didn’t survive my childhood.”

Ivy stubbornly shook her head. “You can’t push me away, so stop trying.”

Catching the fisted hand she touched to his chest, he battled the desire to surrender to her will. If he acknowledged the nascent bond between them, she’d use up her very life force in an attempt to heal him—and the abyss of numbness that existed deep inside him would suck her in, suck her dry.

Watch over your Sunny as I wasn’t able to watch over mine.

His honor might be in shreds, but this one good thing he would do—he would keep Ivy Jane safe from her own too-generous heart, so she wouldn’t end up dust long before her time.

Chapter 25

“THANK YOU FOR
making me feel alive for the first time in a decade,” he told her as he fought and failed to release her wrist. “If I could alter time, I’d make myself into a man who could walk by your side, but I’m meant for the shadows.” Meant to live in the cold dark with the other monsters. “It’s where I intend to stay.”

Ripping away her hand to leave him forsaken, Ivy said, “Inside,” in a voice that shook. “I have something to say to you, and I won’t do it out here.”

He shouldn’t have gone behind closed doors with her, but he teleported them into her cabin. Pacing to the kitchen counter then back, Ivy slapped both her hands against his chest and pushed. “You don’t get to
do
that, Vasic! You don’t get to just give up!”

He gripped her wrists again, the feel of her skin against his own water to ground so parched he knew it had no hope of recovery. “I’ll never give up.” Peace, dark and quiet, had long been the beacon that kept him moving along the numb road of his life, but he could never find it by leaving her to face the world alone. “I will protect you until the day I die.”
No one
would ever hurt Ivy, ever bruise the bright hope of her. “I’m tainted, Ivy. There’s so much ugliness on me it can never be washed away.”

Ivy’s chest heaved as she tried to gasp in air. “You think that makes me happy?” Her hands attempting to push against him again. “To know you intend to spend the rest of your life at the periphery of mine, alone in the darkness?”

“It’s who I am.” The pattern had been set long ago. “I can’t change.” Could never erase the horror of all he’d done.

“Or you
won’t
change!” Her body trembling, she tugged at her wrists again, this time with far less force.

And he had to set her free, the warmth of her leaving a sensory tattoo against his palms even as ice formed in his bones. Ignoring the pain, he gathered up the echoes of sensation and placed them carefully in his private mental vault, though he knew memory would never do justice to all the facets of her. The green apple scent of her hair, the lush softness that was simply Ivy, the silken fragility of her skin, the angry flutter of her pulse beneath his thumb . . . he couldn’t hope to capture Ivy Jane in any box.

“Wear the jacket.” A snapped-out command as he headed for the door. “It’s started to snow.”

He obeyed the order, stepped out into the cold. However, when it was time for him to go off shift, he returned to her night-dark cabin ostensibly to leave the jacket for her. Hearing her calm, steady breathing beyond the screen that hid her bed, he hung up the jacket on a kitchen chair, then stretched out on the floor. Comfort was meaningless, his body trained to find rest where it could . . . but at least here, he was close to her.

His hands were too stained with blood to touch her, but he could use those same brutal hands to keep her safe, protect her from harm.

A whisper of clothing against skin followed by the sound of feet on the floor.

Vasic kept his eyes shut, felt a blanket being placed over him, Ivy’s palm cupping his cheek for a single instant before she broke contact to slide a pillow under his head with a gentle touch. “I am so mad at you,” she whispered, then tugged up the blanket and pressed a kiss to his temple that smashed an ice pick through his defenses, green apples and Ivy in his every breath. “And this is ridiculous, sleeping on the floor. Stubborn man.”

Opening his eyes after she left, he stared into the darkness as he fought to ride out the dissonance for the thousandth time since he’d met her. At its basest level, Silence worked by linking pain to emotion until the mind learned to avoid that which caused it hurt.

The brutality of the punishment was multiplied tenfold for Arrows: Vasic hadn’t only had his leg broken when he’d asked to go home as a child. He’d been deliberately burned then healed, not once, not twice, but over and over; had suffered electrical shocks; had been locked naked in an icy room until his extremities froze, only for him to then be put into overwhelming heat that made his nerve endings scream awake.

All before he was eight years old.

The worst thing was that it had been done by people he’d initially thought he could trust. His mentor, Patton, had doled out many of the worst punishments, his years on Jax having erased any empathic center he may have once had. A few of the other Arrows had tried to ameliorate the viciousness of Vasic’s training, but they’d been limited in what they could do, the rebellion that had begun to simmer in the ranks not yet strong enough to emerge from the shadows.

Vasic’s brain was now hardwired to equate emotion with pain and to strengthen the message with further punishment, agony spearing down into his spine. A perfect loop that had been programmed to end in death should the subject continue to defy the conditioning. It was fortunate, therefore, that he didn’t have the physiological triggers in his mind that backed up the psychological coercion.

The dissonance could not kill him.

He had no idea how Judd had broken those deeply embedded telepathic controls without suffering severe brain damage. Vasic wouldn’t have been able to do so without Aden, his own telepathy lacking the required delicacy. The other Arrow’s expertise had been hard-won, the cost paid in agonizing convulsions that could’ve left him brain-dead.

Now only a single critical tripwire remained in Vasic’s mind—one that would give him a sharp, pointed warning should his telekinesis threaten to rage out of control. Vasic didn’t know how many other Arrows Aden had helped escape the vise around their minds, but it wasn’t a small number—and it included Abbot. What Aden couldn’t fix was the long-term psychological impact of the extreme dissonance on many of them. While Vasic could tell his mind emotion and sensation didn’t mean pain, it had learned otherwise too early.

Learning the opposite would take time, but Vasic would rewire himself to accept the pleasure that was Ivy’s lips on his skin, her skin against his. If that was all he’d ever have of her, he would experience the memories in all their glory. Exhaling in silence, he opened his mental Ivy file and located the one of her whispering to him about Turkish Delight. He’d researched the candy during a night shift, found a store in San Francisco that sold it, and now started to scroll through their online listings.

Stop,
said the part of him that had made him confess his perfidy to her, forced him to show Ivy the hands so soaked in blood, the stain was permanent,
she isn’t for you.

Vasic ignored that voice. He’d torn himself to shreds today with what he’d done, but he’d hurt Ivy, too. That had never been his aim. This candy made her happy. So he’d order it now, pick it up tomorrow. Taking care of her was his reason for being.

•   •   •

THE
world went to hell at eleven the next morning.

Ivy was stomping around in the woods with an equally grumpy Rabbit when Vasic blasted a message to everyone in the compound.
Shield and maintain until advised otherwise. Do not venture into the Net.

Reaching for him, she touched blank nothingness, as if he’d gone too far for her telepathy to reach. It was tempting to jack into the Net, read the datastreams, but she knew Vasic. He wouldn’t send a warning like that unless it was necessary. Leaving the woods, she walked to the center of the compound, the other Es already converging on the snow.

“Ivy,” Isaiah said the instant she was within earshot. “He’s your Arrow. What do you know?”

Yep, the guy was still an arrogant ass. “Nothing you don’t.” She hadn’t even spoken to her obstinate male this morning—he’d been gone when she woke, and hadn’t turned up for breakfast as he usually did. When she’d looked out the window to see if he was just avoiding her, having every intention of hunting him down, she’d seen him with his unit, the nine of them locked in a taut discussion.

An hour ago, she’d returned from a conversation with a couple of the other Es to find a box of Turkish Delight on the kitchen table. Ivy wanted to alternately throw it at his head and haul him down so she could share the taste with him, mouth to mouth.

Concetta raised a hesitant hand. “I was on the Net before the warning came.” Lower lip trembling when everyone focused on her, the shy empath ducked her head.

Rabbit ran over to nuzzle at her leg in an attempt to help. Aware the other woman was afraid of her pet, Ivy went to call him back, but to her surprise, Concetta bent down to very carefully stroke Rabbit.

“Well?” one of the men urged.

“Can it, Chang.” Isaiah walked over to crouch next to Concetta, his next words too low to carry.

Nodding, the tiny blonde allowed him to gently tug her to her feet. “I was looking at the infection, and”—she locked her fingers together, flexed, unflexed—“I saw the leading edge of a power wave smashing through the Net, like during the anchor collapse in Australia, but this was
worse
.” Her amber eyes stark, she shook her head. “I expected to go down under it, but I haven’t felt anything.”

Neither had Ivy. It took a split second for her to guess why.
Oh God!

“The Arrows,” Jaya whispered as Ivy glanced frantically around the compound. “They must’ve protected us.”

“Where are they?” she asked, unable to see a single black-clad figure. “Where are the Arrows?”
Vasic! Answer me!

The others scattered in a rush of pounding boots over snow.

Abdomen twisting as she thought of the blank absence when she’d reached for Vasic, Ivy fought her nausea to bend down to her loyal pet. “Rabbit, where’s Vasic? Find him. Find Vasic.”

Her dog took off toward their cabin. Racing after him, she saw her Arrow seated against the far wall, his open eyes bleeding ruby tears, and his hands fisted so tight, she could count each tendon and bone. “Vasic!”