The Psy-Changeling Collection (82 page)

Judd glanced at her, then gave a small nod. “Timothy was killed using the same type of method, but the details are different. The biggest being that he was male.”

And Santano Enrique, the bastard who’d tortured Brenna and killed so many others, had taken exclusively women. Because he’d liked to do certain things, things that required a woman’s—Brenna shoved the memories back into the locker inside her mind where she kept the darkest, filthiest pieces of what he had done to her. “You think someone’s copying him?” The idea made her gorge rise. Even dead, the butcher’s evil continued.

“Likely.” Judd halted at a fork in the tunnels. “This isn’t your fight. Leave the investigation to those who have experience in that area.”

“Because I only have experience at being a
victim
?”

The metallic scent of blood rose from his shredded flesh as he folded his arms. “You’re too blinded by your own emotions to do Timothy justice. This isn’t about you.”

She opened her mouth to tell him how wrong he was but shut it as quickly. Admitting the truth wasn’t an option—it would sound insane, the ravings of a broken mind. “Go get your wounds tended,” she said instead. “The smell of Psy blood isn’t particularly appetizing.” She was worried about how deep Tai had gouged him, but damn if she was going to admit that.

Judd didn’t even blink at her insulting tone. “I’ll escort you to your room.”

“Try it and I’ll claw out your eyes.” Turning, she strode off, able to feel his gaze on her every step of the way until she turned the corner. It was tempting to collapse then, to release the mask of anger she wore like a shield, but she waited until she was safely back in her room before giving in. “I
did
see it,” she told the walls, terrified.

The flesh parting under the blade, the blood pouring, the pallor of death, she’d seen it all. It had left her a trembling, shaken mess, but she’d found comfort in the fact that it had been nothing more than a nightmare.

Except now her nightmare had taken the ugliest of forms.

Judd ensured Brenna
was in her quarters before he returned to the crime scene and spoke at length with Indigo. Then he made his way to his own room. Once there, he stripped and showered to remove the dried blood on his arms. Brenna was right—the scent would only draw attention to him, given the changelings’ acute sense of smell, and tonight, he needed to be invisible.

When he stepped out, he didn’t bother to look in a mirror, simply thrust a hand through his hair and left it at that. A part of his mind noted that his hair was past regulation length. Another part dismissed the issue as irrelevant—he was no longer a member of the Psy race’s most elite army. The Psy Council had sentenced his entire family—his brother, Walker; Walker’s daughter, Marlee; and Sienna and Toby, the children of his dead sister, Kristine—to the living death of rehabilitation.

If they hadn’t defected, they would have had their minds wiped clean, their brains destroyed until they weren’t much more than walking vegetables. It had been a calculated gamble to come to the wolves. He and Walker had expected to die, but they had hoped for mercy for Toby and Marlee. Sienna, too old to be a child, too young to be an adult, had decided to take her chances with the wolves rather than face rehabilitation.

But the SnowDancers hadn’t killed the adults on sight. As a result, he now lived in a world where his old life meant nothing. Getting dressed, he pulled on his pants, socks, and boots first. A man could defeat an opponent bare-chested; having bare feet was a far greater disadvantage. It was as he was pulling on a shirt that the expected message came through on his small silver phone. Leaving the shirt buttons undone, he read the encrypted words, translating them in his mind.

Target confirmed. Window: One week.

He deleted the message the second after reading it. His next act was to push up the long sleeves of his black shirt and wrap plain cotton bandages around his forearms—they would help mask the smell of rapidly regenerating skin. Brenna would have been very surprised to see how fast he healed.

His mind went over the murder scene one more time. He was certain they were dealing with a copycat. The cuts had been superficially similar to those made by Santano Enrique but nothing more. Where Enrique had taken pride in the precision with which he mutilated his victims’ bodies, this killer had hacked rather than sliced. Indigo had also confirmed that no Psy scent had been found at the scene. The final deciding factor was that Santano Enrique was most definitely dead—Judd had witnessed the other Psy being torn to pieces by wolf and leopard claws.

There was no need for Brenna to worry that her tormentor had come back from the grave. Of course that was Psy logic at work and she was indisputably a changeling. More to the point, she didn’t know that Judd been present at Enrique’s execution and, by extension, her rescue. He had no intention of changing that. Because, while he might not be much good at predicting emotional reactions, he had learned enough about Brenna during the healing sessions—where he’d “lent” his psychic strength to Sascha as she worked to repair the fractures in Brenna’s mind—to know she’d react negatively to the knowledge of his involvement.

I’m not a baby anymore.

No, she wasn’t. And he wasn’t her protector. He couldn’t be—the closer he got to her, the more he could hurt her. Silence had been invented for those like him—the brutal killers and the viciously insane, those who had turned the world of the Psy into a blood-soaked hell so bad, Silence had become the better choice.

The second he broke conditioning, he became a loaded gun with no safety switch. That was why he was never going to do what Sascha had done and end the Silence in his mind. It was the only thing keeping the world safe from what he was . . . the only thing keeping Brenna safe.

Pulling on a black jacket identical to the one Tai had slashed, he slid the phone into his pocket. It was time to leave the den.

He had a bomb to build.

CHAPTER 3

Kaleb Krychek,
cardinal Tk and the newest member of the Psy Council, terminated the call and leaned back in his chair, hands steepled in front of him. “Silver,” he said, activating the intercom with a negligible use of his telekinetic abilities, “find all my files on the Liu family group.”

“Yes, sir.”

Knowing the task would take her several minutes, he mentally reviewed the call. Jen Liu, matriarch of the Liu Group, had made her thoughts clear.

“We have a mutually beneficial relationship,” she’d said, green eyes unblinking. “I’m certain you would do nothing to jeopardize that. However, I’m not so certain of your colleagues on the Council. We’re still paying for their last decision—Faith NightStar’s prices have almost doubled as her family seeks to regain what it lost.”

The NightStar Affair, as that particular political debacle was now called, had come about immediately prior to Kaleb’s ascension to the Council. Faith NightStar, a powerful foreseer, had chosen to drop from the PsyNet and into the arms of one of the DarkRiver cats. Two Councilors had made the hasty decision to try and recapture her, putting her life at risk and alienating not only her family, the powerful NightStar Group, but also all the businesses who relied on Faith’s predictions. Businesses such as the Liu Group.

Now, Kaleb stared thoughtfully at the transparent screen that had moments before held Jen Liu’s face. The matriarch had been correct in her estimation of his loyalties. He valued the alliances he’d built up on his way to gaining a Council seat. Those alliances had been nurtured with cold-blooded precision—he had known that a Councilor who had the support of certain sectors of society would wield far more than his share of power. And Kaleb appreciated power. It was why he’d made Councilor at a bare twenty-seven years of age.

He tapped at the screen, switching it from communications to data mode, then pulled up files on the rest of the Council. Putting the bio files on one side, he accessed the ones on the NightStar Affair. Beside that, he left an empty space for the information Silver was collating.

Finally, he brought up a highly confidential file titled “Protocol I.” Right now, all he had on that matter were suspicions, but that would change. The Liu issue would do for a first strike. He saw no need to draw blood . . . yet.

Kaleb was nothing if not patient. The same way a cobra is patient.

CHAPTER 4

One day
after the murder, and countless hours of arguments with herself later, Brenna knew Judd was the only person she could ask, the only one who might possibly understand. And yet, he was also the worst, so cold that he sometimes appeared less human than a statue carved out of ice. Before being kidnapped, she’d gone to great lengths to avoid him, intrinsically disturbed by the inhuman chill of his personality.

Well aware her brothers would turn feral at the mere thought of her alone with Judd, she took every care to remain invisible as she tiptoed out of their family quarters after dinner and toward the section occupied by unmated soldiers. Judd lived alone, his brother, Walker, and the three minors having been relocated to the family section. The move had taken place four months after the Laurens first sought sanctuary with SnowDancer.

Surprisingly, it had been the pack’s maternal females who had ordered Hawke to think about what it was doing to the Psy children to be isolated in the soldiers’ area. Given how sensitive the females were to anything that might pose a danger to the cubs, Brenna would’ve expected them to demand distance—Marlee and Toby might be kids but they were very powerful kids.

Conversely, SnowDancer pups tended to play rough and could maul the Psy children without meaning to. But the maternal females had extended the invitation and Walker Lauren had accepted on behalf of his daughter, Marlee, and nephew, Toby. At seventeen, Toby’s sister, Sienna, could no longer be classified as a child, but neither was she an adult. In this case, the headstrong teenager had chosen to stay with the children.

Leaving Judd alone.

As Judd was considered the most dangerous member of the Lauren family, his living quarters had never been in any question. He continued to be looked on with suspicion, though she knew he’d been integral to her rescue. While he hadn’t been one of those who’d entered the pain-soaked room that had been her torture chamber—an omission for which she would always be grateful—he’d helped Sascha lay the psychic trap that had led to Enrique’s capture. He’d proven his loyalty. But still he remained an outsider.

The unfairness of it rubbed at her sense of justice, but she couldn’t blame her packmates for their feelings, not when Judd seemed determined to reinforce their attitude. The man was aloof to the point of rudeness.

Reaching his door, she knocked softly. “Hurry up.” Though the corridor was currently deserted, she could near the sound of approaching footsteps. With her luck, it would be one of her overprotective brothers.

The door opened. “What—?”

She ducked under his arm and into the room. “Shut it before someone comes.” For a second, she thought he would refuse, but then he pushed it closed.

Turning to stand with his back to the door, he folded his arms across a bare chest. “If your brothers find you here, they’ll put you under lock and key.”

She was suddenly hyperconscious of the scent of fresh male sweat and gleaming skin in a confined space. Terror spiked, but she squashed it almost before it arose, hiding it in that impregnable box in her mind. “Aren’t you worried about what they’ll do to you?” Despite the edge of fear, her fingertips tingled, wanting to touch this dangerous creature.

“I can take care of myself.”

Of that she had no doubt. “So can I.”

Judd’s eyes, eyes the color of bitterest chocolate except for the flecks of gold in the irises, didn’t shift their focus off her face. “What are you doing here, Brenna?”

She shook herself out of her fascination. “I need to talk to a Psy and you’re it.”

“What about Sascha?”

“She won’t understand.” Brenna both respected and liked Sascha Duncan, the Psy mind-healer who had mated with Lucas Hunter, alpha to the DarkRiver leopards. But . . . “She’s too good, too gentle.”

“It’s a side effect of her abilities,” Judd said in his usual icy tone.

It was a tone that infuriated the other males, but Brenna knew she wasn’t the only female who wondered about thawing him out. Her claws pricked the insides of her skin as she was hit by a near-violent surge of inexplicable sensual hunger. She fought it—she wasn’t stupid enough to think she could change him.

“Sascha feels the emotions of others,” Judd continued. “If she harmed another being, it would rebound back on her.”

“I know that.” Fisting her hands, she turned on her heel and began to pace around the small room. His scent was everywhere, closing around her changeling senses in a dark and uncompromising masculine wave. “This is like a cell. Couldn’t you put up a poster at least?” The size of the room was comparable to those of other unmated soldiers, but even the worst lone wolf made some changes to his living space.

In contrast, Judd’s was stark in its emptiness, his bed the single piece of furniture, the sheet white, the blanket institutional gray. The only addition appeared to be a horizontal exercise bar fitted about a foot below the ceiling.

“I don’t see the point.” He leaned back against the door, the movement drawing her attention to a chest she knew was pure hard muscle. “Ask what you came to ask.”

“I told you I’m seeing things. I saw that—that—” She couldn’t bring herself to say it, to reawaken the nightmare.

Of course Judd didn’t attempt to offer comfort. “I explained that they’re likely nothing more than psychic echoes of the trauma you suffered at Enrique’s hands.”

“You’re wrong. They’re real.”

“Tell me what you see.”

“Bad, bad things,” she whispered, hugging herself. “Death and blood and pain.”

Judd’s expression didn’t alter. “Be more specific.”

Sudden, blinding anger swamped the fear raised by the memories. “Sometimes you make me want to scream! Would it hurt you to try and appear a little human?”