The Psy-Changeling Collection (296 page)

Even as he opened his mouth to reply, she spoke again, and this time, her words were icily pragmatic. “Carmichael Jones was Councilor Duncan’s main advisor in relation to the property arm of her business.”

Max let her retreat for now. “Construction’s a big part of her empire from what I’ve heard.”

“Yes. She’s had a lot of success building changeling-aimed complexes.”

“Hmm.” He considered what he knew of changelings. His friendship with Clay—and another DarkRiver sentinel, Dorian—was solid, but it had been earned through blood. In general, when it came to strangers, the predatory species tended to maintain a reserved distance. “How did she manage that?”

“She has an agreement with your friends’ pack. I believe it’s proven a beneficial arrangement for both parties.” A little movement as she settled against her seat, the scent of her a tantalizing stroke across his senses. “There are rumors the SnowDancer wolves are a silent party in many of these deals, but no confirmation.”

Max whistled. If the cats were chilly when it came to outsiders, the wolves were downright glacial. “Did Carmichael Jones deal with the leopards?”

“No. Nikita is the main contact—which is unusual.”

Caressing the car through a turn, he shook his head. “Not really—I have a feeling her daughter was meant to be the original lead.” He’d never met Sascha, but he had met her mate, Lucas, briefly during his previous trip to San Francisco—on the trail of another butcher, one who’d eviscerated children like they were so much meat.

“Detective . . . Max. Are you well?”

He realized he was squeezing the steering wheel hard enough to turn his skin bloodless. “Yeah.”

“You have nightmares, too.” Soft words. “They always pass.”

The statement hit him with the force of a ten-ton truck—she was trying, he realized, to comfort him, this J who had more nightmares inside her skull than he’d ever see, even if he lived ten lifetimes. “Nikita,” he said, his voice dropping as he fought the urge to bring the car to a halt, to take her into his arms, to comfort
her
, “probably took over when Sascha defected.”

She didn’t pursue the subject of nightmares. “Yes, that makes sense.”

“And Sascha
is
her blood”—he knew better than anyone that that didn’t always mean what it should, but in this case—“maybe she needs the contact.”

Sophia shook her head. “Nikita cut off Sascha the instant her daughter proved flawed.”

Her words, coupled with the direction of his thoughts, threatened to pitch him back into the past, into the life of another unwanted child. “Do you think,” he said, slamming the door on those memories, “that Sascha is flawed?”

“It doesn’t matter what I think, only what Councilor Duncan believes.”

“You didn’t strike me as a coward, Sophia.”

Utter stillness. “What is it you want from me?” It was an outwardly calm question, but he was certain he heard a bewildered vulnerability beneath the surface.

It made him feel like a bastard. “I’m just trying to know who you are.” And why she spoke to a part of him that had gone quiet a long, long time ago.

“Nobody,” she said, her tone so flat, he could’ve imagined the soft-voiced woman who’d told him his nightmares would pass. “I’m nobody.”

“Sophi—”

Sophia spoke over him, the dark, broken girl inside her panicked. He was pushing too hard, seeing too much. She wasn’t ready to be exposed to the light, wasn’t ready to bare the scars that scored her from the inside out. “Getting back to the financial situation,” she said, the words coming out in a fast, staccato beat, “the cumulative effect of her advisors’ deaths, while not huge, has been enough to cause Nikita significant problems in terms of her overall business reputation.”

Max didn’t speak for almost a minute, but when he did, it was about the case.

She didn’t make the mistake of thinking he’d given up. Max Shannon had scented her weakness. And like the puma she saw in his masculine grace, he wouldn’t let up until he’d drawn first blood.

CHAPTER 9

Hundreds of miles
away, in the dark outskirts of Moscow, Councilor Kaleb Krychek got out of bed, having slept roughly two hours. Knowing there would be no more rest, not tonight, he pulled on a pair of pants in a thin, breathable material and went for a run across the night-draped countryside that surrounded his home.

The earth was hard, almost cutting underneath his uncovered feet, the wind a whip across the skin of his back. He felt none of it, his mind racing through the endless black skies of the PsyNet, the darkness broken only by the stars that represented the minds of the millions of Psy hooked into the network—a network that provided the biofeedback necessary for life.

Kaleb ignored those minds, his focus on finding the one piece of data the NetMind itself seemed to be hiding from him. Tonight, too, the neosentience that was both the guardian and librarian of the Net—a neosentience that in
all other things obeyed Kaleb without question—held him at bay, its shields impenetrable.

Dropping back fully into the world, he ran at a pace that would’ve surprised those who’d seen him only in the suits he wore as a Councilor, pristine and flawless. That would’ve been their mistake. Because he was a cardinal telekinetic, his psychic strength beyond measure, his eyes—white stars on a spread of black—living pieces of the PsyNet. More, he was the most powerful Tk in the Net—movement was as simple to him as breathing. And tonight, he moved through infinite quiet. Even the nocturnal creatures seemed to have gone to ground.

Perhaps it was because they’d sensed a more dangerous predator in their midst.

Returning home after an hour, his body covered in sweat, he took a shower, then sat down at his desk. The first thing he pulled up was a file on Sophia Russo, not out of any particular interest, but because he made a habit of keeping an eye on what his fellow Councilors were doing. Nikita might’ve been an ally, but theirs was an alliance of expediency, nothing more.

The J-Psy’s file was detailed, as was the case with most of her designation. And notwithstanding her irregular childhood, and recent appearance on the rehabilitation watchlist, her abilities fell within fairly normal parameters for a J. So why was Nikita so interested in this one particular J? There was no doubt that she was—the request to the J Corps had been very specific.

Making a mental note to monitor the situation, he was about to pull up another file when he felt something trigger his outermost shields on the PsyNet. Given that those shields were so complex they were all but invisible, he only spared the incident a cursory glance. Many people contacted his shields without realizing it. But then, the intruder made it
through
those shields.

Kaleb opened his psychic eye between one blink and the next.

The intruder was gone.

Which in itself was an answer—because anyone good enough to have left without getting caught in one of his traps shouldn’t have triggered the alarm in the first place. “So,” he murmured on the physical plane, “the game has begun.”

CHAPTER 10

Sensation builds. You may consider a handshake harmless, but each time you touch a human, it threatens your conditioning.

—
Excerpted from lessons given to Psy children during
their transition into adult training

Sophia was more
than ready to exit the car by the time Max brought it to a stop in front of a mid-rise building not far from Golden Gate Park—the site of Kenneth Vale’s apartment, the location of his suicide. Sophia had never suffered from a psychological issue that made her vulnerable to claustrophobia, but being in that car with a quietly brooding Max had been . . . unsettling.

He took up more space than he should, the heat of his body inescapable in the confines of the vehicle. She’d felt as if he was touching her with each wave of that starkly masculine heat—and for a woman who hadn’t been touched in years, it had been an experience that left her scrambling for escape.

“Entry codes?” Max asked as they walked up the steps, his voice rubbing against her skin like sandpaper.

Again, it was touch without a touch, something she had no ability to avoid, to process. “I have them here.” She let them into the building and headed toward the elevator
security console, her gloved fingers slipping off the pad once before she collected herself.

Trembling, Max thought, Sophia was trembling.

“This is a very exclusive building.” A calm voice, that betraying hand dropping to her side as the elevator headed down to them. “Vale’s position with Councilor Duncan enabled him to secure his privacy to this extent.”

“Why bother?” Max folded his arms to keep from sliding his hand under her hair, to the soft warmth of her neck so he could tug her to him, so he could apologize for pushing her too hard, too soon, with a slow, sweet kiss—no matter that they’d been strangers only a day ago.

“Before these deaths,” he said, forcing himself to maintain a white-knuckled hold on a need that refused to obey the rules of civilized behavior, “I’m guessing being Nikita’s business advisor wasn’t exactly a high-risk position, so why the security?”

“Humans,” she said, “and the occasional nonpredatory changeling, have a way of expecting things from Psy they shouldn’t.” A meaningful glance out of those vivid, impossible eyes. “Vale was, in all probability, protecting himself from those who wanted to pitch to him in person.”

The elevator opened at that moment. A woman entered the lobby at almost the same instant, swiping a card where Sophia had entered Vale’s access code. “Please hold the elevator.”

Max did so, conscious of Sophia all but disappearing into a corner.

“Thanks.” The woman’s ruby red smile betrayed her humanity. “Are you moving in? I haven’t seen you before.”

Max saw the stranger give him the once-over, recognized it for what it was. Women had been making him offers since before he was legal. And he’d learned to turn them down without hurting their feelings—because in spite of the actions of the woman who’d shaped him, he’d never hated her or those of her sex. Part of him had always wanted to protect her—even as a child, he’d known that no
matter what she did to him, her pain was deeper, older, a vicious animal that tore her to pieces from the inside out.

So today, he gave this woman a small smile. “Just checking the place out.”

“Well,” she said as the elevator opened on her floor, “if you want to ask any questions about the area, call me.” Passing over a card, she exited, her musky perfume a lingering reminder of her presence.

Sophia stirred. “She was playing a mating game with you.”

Max had been about to drop the card into the small wrought iron recycling bin in the corner, but now slid it into his pocket. If it took jealousy to rouse the real Sophia to the surface, he’d use it without any guilt whatsoever—when a man got kicked this hard in the guts by a woman, anything was fair.

And the unique individual behind the mask of the perfect J, the one who’d told him Bonner’s victims shouldn’t have to spend eternity in the cold dark—that’s who he wanted to know. “It’s called flirting.” He shot her a slow, deliberately provocative smile. “I’m sure you must’ve seen humans do it before.”

“Is that the physical type that attracts you?” Aware she should back off, but unable to stop pushing for an answer, Sophia stepped out of the elevator on Vale’s floor. “Tall, slender, with a fashionable-dress preference?”

Max gestured to the left of the quiet, carpeted corridor. “That’s his place.” Letting her pass him so she could input the code that would disengage the locks, he pushed open the door. “And,” he said in a voice that made the tiny hairs on the back of her nape rise in warning as she walked in ahead of him, “the answer to your question is no. That woman didn’t do it for me.” He pushed the door shut behind them. “Now a small woman with dangerous curves . . . I could bite into her.”

She froze, certain she was misreading the comment, but suddenly very conscious of the way her lower body filled
out her jeans. “Detective Shannon,” she said, turning to face him, “you’re being highly inappropriate.”

His lips kicked up at the corners. “You started it.”

She wanted to trace the shape of those lips, wanted it so badly her fingers cramped as she fisted them. Her Silence had been fragmenting for years—an inevitable side effect of her work as a J, and one for which the J Corps had a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. So long as the medics didn’t find any evidence, the J Corps Management Board wouldn’t turn in a fractured J. It was partly an economic decision in order to retain the number of active Js . . . and partly because everyone in the Corps had looked into the chasm of madness at some point in their lives.

Though Sophia hadn’t allowed herself to think about the truth even within her own mind, conscious of how deep M-Psy could dig, her conditioning had broken close to completely earlier this year, her mind twined with strange, dark tendrils that rebuffed Silence; and the reconditioning she’d undergone only the previous day had already been sloughed off like so much dead skin. But in spite of it all, she’d been able to hold up the facade, the pretense of being the perfect Psy. Until now.

“Breathe, Sophia.” A husky order, and to her surprise, he took a step back, began to walk around Vale’s living area. “This room is set up for entertaining—or maybe meetings, since I’m guessing Psy don’t do parties?”

She forced her brain to function, to provide him with the answers. “Actually,” she said, the words coming sluggishly as she fought the confusion created by his mere presence, “cocktail parties are held when there are human or changeling clients. It’s all about putting the other side at ease.”

Some Psy could even manage a glacial kind of charm—Councilor Kaleb Krychek had an unusual number of admirers in the non-Psy population. She couldn’t understand why. Yes, aesthetically speaking, he was the epitome of a cold male beauty. But he was also, she was certain, quite capable of snapping his admirers’ necks without the least pause should the occasion call for it.