Caressed by Ice

CHAPTER 16

Brenna averted her eyes as her brothers shifted, having no desire to see them in the raw.

“I’m going to kill you” were the first words out of Andrew’s mouth. “What the hell do you think you’re doing with my sister?”

“Later.” Hawke’s authoritative voice.

Brenna looked up and found him standing across from Judd. He was dressed and in human form, having apparently run that way while the others had gone wolf. It was an indication of his strength, part of what made him alpha.

“You made good time,” Judd commented to Hawke, then held out the trigger. “I have a feeling you’ll find some prints on this. Convenient ones.”

“You mean like this?” Riley’s voice.

“What is it?” Brenna asked, still not looking. Of course she’d seen others naked after a shift—it was normal. But these were her brothers.

“A sweatshirt,” Judd told her.

“A sweatshirt that smells like leopard.” Riley again. “The whole area reeks of cat.”

The silence that fell after his words was ominous. DarkRiver and SnowDancer had been business allies for over a decade but their alliance had turned into a blood bond mere months ago. Trust was a dicey thing.

Hawke’s face was grim as he glanced at the damning piece of evidence. “If Lucas’s people had been behind this, they would have done a better job of cleaning up. I can smell another signature below the leopard markers.”

The others frowned and Brenna saw several pairs of eyes widen in puzzlement as they tried to sort through the scent layers to identify the vaguely “sweaty” taint of something that shouldn’t have been there.

“It was a pack of hyenas,” Brenna said into the quiet.

Everyone stared. Chief among their reaction was disbelief.

“Those scavengers?” Drew said at last. “You sure?”

Scowling, she rounded on him, keeping her eyes firmly above his neck. Her brother, like most changelings, was totally comfortable nude. It was her reaction that was unnatural. She knew that. She just didn’t want to examine the reason why…was scared to discover what else Enrique had mutilated inside of her. “I didn’t lose my nose during the abduction, only half my mind.”

Andrew winced. “Christ, you’re mean when you’re pissed. But can you blame me? Hyenas don’t go near anything that might bite back.”

“We need to talk,” Judd said to Hawke.

The alpha gave a sharp nod. “I want everyone except Riley, Drew, and Indigo to start running a search perimeter. Try to pick up the hyenas’ trail. I’ll make a few calls—we might get lucky if the eagles were in the area.”

“Eagles?” Brenna looked up as if she might see some. “How many?”

“A small flight. They’re here to attend a human wedding.”

Clearly they’d made sure to ask permission from Hawke before setting foot or taking wing in the area under SnowDancer control. Otherwise, they would’ve been labeled enemies and taken out. A harsh law, but one that allowed stability in the agressive world of predatory changelings. Without it, the carnage that had been the eighteenth century’s Territorial Wars would never have ended.

Hawke looked at his soldiers. “Go.”

For a stunning few seconds, the world shimmered with a thousand brilliant colors as the soldiers shifted. Then wolves dashed off in all directions, their paws flying swift and silent over the snow. Brenna’s entire body went immobile as she watched them move, so strong, so beautiful. Envy was a hateful buzz in her head, one that had the power to turn her bitter and full of spite—Enrique might not have killed her, but he’d succeeded in crippling her.

You are not crippled, not now, not ever.

The memory had her looking away from the sleek forms of her packmates to Judd. He was watching her, no hint of an apology in his features. Her earlier fury reignited, but Hawke spoke before she could let her temper get the better of her.

“Tell me what you found.”

Judd responded with military precision. “They were carrying high-grade laser-powered weapons. None are readily available on the general market.”

“Psy supplied?”

“High likelihood. They’re produced by Psy companies.”

Riley changed position and it caught her attention—her older brother didn’t make random movements. It was Andrew who was the more physically impatient.

Hawke had also noted the action. “You have something to add?”

“For a race that dislikes using weapons,” Riley commented, “the Psy sure seem to have some advanced ones.”

“What makes you think the Psy have an aversion to weapons?” Judd asked, so eerily calm it made her want to shiver.

Riley stared hard enough to have sent lesser men cowering. “They’ve never used them to take us out.”

“Only because such an open move would cause too big a ripple. It might destabilize the economy if people thought a Psy-changeling war was in the making.” Judd’s arctic tone was akin to the baring of fangs by a wolf. “That’s why they prefer quieter, less detectable methods of removing changelings from the equation.”

“Like setting us against the cats. Exactly how stupid do they think we are?” Hawke pulled a sleek black phone out of his back pocket and punched in a code. “Lucas,” he said a second later. “We may have a situation.” A short pause and then Hawke’s face went preternaturally still.

Brenna stood in tense silence as her alpha listened to whatever it was the DarkRiver alpha was telling him, blindingly aware of the unsettling quiet of Judd by her side. A Tk. One of the same breed that had tortured her, broken her.

You’re being stupid and childish, a part of her mind said. No, she wasn’t, replied another part, one that had been bruised and bloodied.

“How bad?” Hawke asked, his savage tone snapping her back to the present. “Do I need to pull out my people?” Another pause. “Try hyena. I’ll see you as soon as you can make it.” He ended the call and returned the phone to his pocket.

“They were also hit,” Judd guessed.

“Someone tried to snatch three cubs from a city kindergarten.”

“Cubs hurt?” Indigo finally spoke.

Hawke shook his head. “It was in Chinatown, near their HQ. Kids went cat and roared their heads off. A teacher and several nearby shopkeepers got to them in seconds, but it was long enough for the attacker to blend into the streets and lose himself in the crowd. He also found the time to leave behind a piece of his clothing.”

No one had to ask what scent had been embedded in that clothing.

“Cats have to be rabid—got to be some hotheads who aren’t thinking straight,” Riley said. “We going on alert?”

Hawke gave a negative shake of his head. “Lucas says he has the situation under control. He’s contained the spread of information, and the juveniles who know have been told it looks like a Psy setup. He has them trying to track the attacker, which should keep them out of trouble.”

“Not a bad result,” Judd remarked. “Even a year ago, you would’ve shed some blood over this.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” Hawke’s ice-blue eyes were almost silver in the bright daylight, beautiful in a way Brenna had never before noticed. He wasn’t the kind of man who invited that sort of appreciation—he was too male, too hard. Exactly like Judd.

Soldier. Assassin. Tk.

“There’s one more thing we have to consider.” Judd glanced at the cabin and then back, something in his expression striking her as strange. “It might not have been the Psy. Others could have gained access to those weapons, humans and changelings included.”

Andrew growled. “Trying to save your race, Psy? Who else would dare intrude on SnowDancer and DarkRiver territory?”

“What happens if you set up the dominant changelings in a region against the Psy?”

Riley understood first. “We wipe each other out, leaving the region open to takeover by a new dominant pack.”

“Or a human conglomerate.” As his expression had, Judd’s voice sounded slightly off to her senses, but she couldn’t put her finger on why. “The Psy Council ignores humans. Changelings don’t, but you still see them as weaker. They’re not. The Human Alliance has access to a massive amount of firepower and funds.”

Hawke rubbed at his jaw. “If we track the hyenas, we’ll have a starting point. You get anything else?”

“They knew where they were going—they’d done their reconnaissance and done it well enough to know the cabin was supposed to be empty.”

“It doesn’t add up.” Riley’s pragmatic nature asserted itself. “If their point was to start a turf war, why take out an isolated cabin?”

“First step.” Judd’s voice was different. Something was minutely off-kilter and it was rubbing her fur the wrong way. “A carefully planned and controlled escalation,” he continued when no one interrupted. “Sooner or later, no matter what you or Lucas do, the packs are going to start sniping at each other.”

“He’s making sense.” Andrew’s acceptance was grudging, to say the least. “Stagger a series of small episodes and the bad blood builds up until, by the time the big one hits, we’re not thinking enough to talk it down.”

“I want those hyenas.” Hawke turned to Riley. “The search here is yours. Drew, you and Indigo escort Brenna back to the den. I have to speak to Judd.”

“I don’t need babysitters,” Brenna said through clenched teeth, able to feel the roughness of the wolf in her throat. “I’ll can get back on my own.”

“No.” Hawke’s tone was unbending, that of an alpha who expected instant obedience. “If they touch you, war will happen. You’re a tactical weakness.”

A mixture of fury and impotent rage coated her tongue. “That’s a load of crock! Any one of the females or pups gets taken, it’ll have the exact same impact.”

“I’m not going to argue with you about this.” Hawke jerked his head. “Move.”

Brenna looked instinctively at Judd, knowing he was strong enough to take on Hawke. He returned her stare, impassive. “Hawke is right. Because of the abduction and rescue, you occupy a different status in the pack. You should return—the pack’s coherence is necessary to support my family.”

The betrayal crushed her but coming on top of what he’d said earlier, it also stoked her anger. “What else did I expect from one of the Psy?” It was a bitchy thing to say but she couldn’t believe he’d turned on her like that—males were supposed to stick by their females, no matter what. It finally pounded home the truth she’d gone to such great lengths to ignore. Judd was incapable of any loyalty but the one he’d already given his family.

She turned to Indigo. “Let’s go.”

“Shift. It’ll be faster.”

Vicious anger raked its claws over her heart. “No.” Let them think she was being a brat. “I’m running human.” Suiting action to words, she took off, leaving behind both her packmates and the cold Psy male who had given her up without pause.

Judd watched Brenna until she was swallowed up by the winter-blue trees. Then he turned to the SnowDancer alpha. Hawke was watching him in turn, an inscrutable expression on his face. For a race notorious for their emotionality, the wolf was very good at keeping his feelings under wraps.

“There’s not much more I can tell you aside from the exact make and models of the weapons I saw.” He rattled off the numbers, but his attention was focused on the steady countdown of the timer in his mind. Five, four, three, two…flameout.

He was psychically blind.

It felt like losing a limb, losing all sense of identity. He was a psychic being, meant to occupy two planes. Now only one was open to him.

“Might help narrow things down,” Hawke said and his voice sounded flat to Judd’s altered senses. “Like you said, these weapons aren’t exactly available at the corner store.”

It was a struggle to focus when it felt like he was breathing through mud. “Even if you locate the supplier, be careful. If it was the Psy, they had to have known the hyenas were too inexperienced to pull this off smoothly. The operation might be a lot more complicated than it appears on the surface.”

“I never take anything on face value.” Hawke’s eyes looked metallic to Judd’s compromised senses, as if seeing things in technicolor depended on his psychic eye. “I need to talk to you about something else. What do you know about a Ghost in the Net?”

It was a question so unexpected, Judd went silent.

Hawke scowled. “Nothing?”

“He’s a rogue.” It had to be one of the women, he thought as he answered. Either Sascha or Faith still had contacts in the Net. “Not much is known about him, but he’s anti-Council, from what I saw before I defected.”

“Do you have any way to get more background on him?”

“No. He’s in the PsyNet and I’m not,” he lied without compunction. Hawke might’ve taken them in but loyalty was another matter. The Ghost, on the other hand, had earned Judd’s silence.

Wolf eyes looked at him with a predator’s watchful attention. “You’re not Psy any longer, Judd. Choose.”

“I chose a long time ago.” He held the alpha’s gaze. “If I learn anything else, I’ll let you know.”

“While you’re doing that, why don’t you consider the decisions you need to make about where your loyalties lie.”

Judd could no longer distinguish the color of Hawke’s hair—the world had turned monochrome. But he held his ground. “Have you ever considered what I’d be if I wasn’t Psy? There is no other available designation.”

“You could be a SnowDancer.”