Caressed by Ice

CHAPTER 22

“How could they?” Brenna’s brow furrowed.

Riley ignored her. “Judd can’t help Sascha and keep an eye on security, too.”

It was the first time either of Brenna’s brothers had even obliquely acknowledged his skill at keeping Brenna safe. But Judd didn’t take it at face value. Riley was a strategist, a man with cool focus, one who thought disturbingly like a Psy.

“She’ll be fine—I’ve got the deer inside our perimeter, soldiers with them twenty-four/seven.” Lucas shook his head. “But my gut says the Psy won’t attack the same target twice.”

Judd agreed. “They’re using a scattergun approach to divide your resources and weaken you in specific areas, with a focus on eliminating those civilian or nonpredatory groups who might support you. It was a tactic used successfully by the Korean army during the Japan-Korea war.”

Lucas narrowed his eyes. “Any idea what they might do next?”

“There have to have been more pieces. The deer hit is too large an escalation otherwise.”

“If they’ve been taking out lone nonpredatory changelings,” Hawke said, expression grim, “and laying the blame on us, we might not hear about it. The families of the victims would be too scared to confront us.”

“Brewing resentment.” Brenna’s husky voice, changed forever by the nightmare. As if she had screamed so hard, something in her vocal cords had broken irreparably. “There’s one thing I don’t get, though,” she continued. “I know I’m not a soldier, but we’ve all heard the Council’s dead bodies stay buried.”

“So why the half-assed job this time?” Lucas completed. “Two options. One, Faith was a wild card they didn’t factor in.”

“Or two,” Judd said, “they’ve overstretched themselves by reaching into territory where they’re the neophytes.”

“What’s your take?” Riley asked, still appearing calm in spite of what had taken place the last time they’d spoken.

Every one of Judd’s guards snapped up—Riley was the kind of hunter who’d stalk before striking. “If I had to guess, I’d say they didn’t forget Faith and likely chose the exact target without much prior planning.”

“Why?” Dorian asked.

“Because if they had planned it down to the name of the group to be attacked, there would’ve been a higher chance of a foreseer picking it up.”

Mercy scowled. “This seeing-the-future stuff makes my head hurt.”

“It’s more probable that instead of a specific target, they had the parameters of what they were looking for—a large, nonaggressive changeling group in a region not under direct watch by either SnowDancer or DarkRiver. Then they set up sentries and waited.”

“The deer were just meat to them,” Brenna said, outrage making her voice tremble. “Bugs to be squashed.”

“Unfortunately Brenna is right. The deer were chess pieces.”

Lucas shoved his free hand through his hair. “They messed up on the location—if they’d waited until the deer were deeper, Dorian and Mercy might not have made it in time.”

Judd nodded. “Before the recent series of events, Psy and changeling concerns rarely collided. The Council’s unaware of the nuances of life in the forests—the importance of scents and wind direction, the ranges leopard sentinels travel, a hundred small things that influence a successful raid.”

“They’re not going to remain that way,” Hawke pointed out. “Each time they come in, they learn more.”

Sascha made a sound of agreement. “And Psy are very good at collating data.”

“This time, it won’t be enough to simply track down and eliminate those personally responsible for the kills.” Judd had seen how the changelings operated. An eye for an eye. Blood for blood. It was a law that worked with their system of honor. However, the Psy had no such honor. “You need to send a bigger message.”

“He’s right.” Lucas looked at Hawke. “They’ve already figured out how to fake our scents. At least well enough to fool a casual observer. If they hit a man’s family—he’s not going to wait to make sure he’s got the right scent. He’ll go for your young in retaliation.”

It was an ugly but clear description of the consequences of escalation. “You can’t afford to go to full-scale war with the Council.” Judd knew what the leaders of his people were capable of, the lines they’d cross. “It could be what they want—if you begin the aggression, then they’re justified in using lethal force.”

For several minutes the only sounds were of the wind whistling through the trees, and for Judd, the steady sound of Brenna’s breathing. She was something he’d never expected and certainly didn’t deserve. He could give her nothing of what she needed, but the dark heart of him was starting to understand that letting her go might not be an option.

She awakened something in him that was raw, desperate, and violent in a way that sprang not from anger but from passion. Sweat beaded down his spine as he fought the rising incursions of dissonance. It was stronger with each admission, each touch. And he didn’t care. Part of him wanted to forget why the dissonance had been hooked so viciously into his psyche, forget what would happen if he snapped the threads of conditioning.

“Data,” Hawke said, before Judd could give in to the mad ness. “The Psy love their computers. We hack their systems and destroy things, they’re going to get the message.”

You mess with our territory, we’ll mess with yours.

Judd had always known that Hawke was one of the most highly intelligent predators he had ever met, but this was inspired even for him. Most alphas would’ve sought some form of bloody retribution—as had Hawke in the past—but for this particular game of chess, a lateral move was better, far better. “If you hit one of the major databases, such as the ones that feed data to the stock market, you disrupt things worldwide.”

“Isn’t most of the information backed up in the PsyNet?” Brenna asked. “I never really got why Psy like computers so much.”

It was Sascha who answered. “The major factor is power. Because a lot of clerical jobs are held by low-Gradient Psy—people who don’t have the psychic strength to access secure data vaults on a continual basis, it’s inefficient to store day-today business records in the Net.” When no one interrupted, she continued. “The other issue is that Psy have to do deals with the other races. Human and changelings both demand data they can access. If the systems go down, the Councilors’ heads might explode. It really is a brilliant idea, Hawke.”

The wolf flashed a smile. “Thank you, Sascha darling. Maybe you’re with the wrong alpha, hmm?”

“I swear, Hawke.” Lucas muttered, shifting so he was pinning Sascha to him with an arm around the front of her neck. “One of these days—”

The threat was cut off as Sascha twisted in his hold and kissed him. It was a short, affectionate act, yet Judd found himself transfixed by it. But it wasn’t Lucas and Sascha he saw. When he looked down at the glossy strands of Brenna’s hair, he could suddenly imagine what they’d feel like as they brushed over his skin in the most intimate of circumstances.

She looked up, eyes wide. “Judd.” A low whisper meant for his ears alone.

He watched the rise of color flush her cheeks.

“Your timing sucks,” she muttered, leaning deeper into him.

He absorbed the psychic impact of the touch, refusing to push her away. Contrary to her words, he thought his timing perfect. It was when they were alone and the fever started to rise that he became aware of the myriad ways in which he could hurt her, mutilate her. She called Enrique a butcher—she hadn’t seen the things Judd had done as an Arrow.

“Do you have any hackers I can use?” Lucas asked, appearing mollified by his mate’s kiss. “We’ve got the setup to run this in the second subbasement of our city HQ.”

“How good are you at hiding your trail? The whole point is to not give them anything they can use against DarkRiver or SnowDancer.” Judd forced his attention away from Brenna, from the unpalatable images of his past.

“They’ve never caught us yet.” Lucas looked pleased as only a cat could. “Dorian’s very good, but we need more hackers of his caliber if we’re going to coordinate a big strike.”

Hawke folded his arms. “We’ve got three who can stay under the radar and one who can do even better.”

Beside him Brenna’s body grew tense, muscles locking into place. Following her gaze, he saw it clash with Riley’s. Her brother seemed to struggle with something for several seconds before giving a curt nod. “Bren’s the best there is.”

“I thought your degree was in computronics.” It didn’t please Judd that there was something he hadn’t known about her. An emotional reaction. The sweat rolling down his spine felt like ice this time.

“My official degree.” The mischief in her eyes was new. “Hawke says I have an unofficial one in creative systems programming.” She laughed.

The sound, the intensity of her happiness, caused another mental chain to snap. The ends of his nerves seemed to burn, his spinal cord turning into a column of excruciating liquid fire—he was perilously close to a meltdown.

Acting before it was too late, he withdrew his hand from Brenna’s…but didn’t push away her body. “I’ll run security on the hack team.” He met Hawke’s eyes. “When Brenna’s there, so am I. I’ll work with Sascha around that.”

“Lucas, you have a problem with that?”

The DarkRiver male shook his head. “As long as there’s no chance of you getting recognized.” He scowled. “You look so fucking Psy, you might as well wear a holo-sign.”

That his expression had fooled an alpha told Judd none of his internal struggles were showing. “I’ll make certain my appearance isn’t a cause for concern.”

“There’s one more thing.” Lucas’s markings darkened again. “The deer need to know they’re safe. We track and hit the assassins first, a day or so before the computer strike so the Council thinks the blood was all we wanted. They might get complacent.”

Judd looked at the DarkRiver alpha and understood that he’d made a promise to the deer to lessen their nightmares. It was how changeling society worked—the predators ran the show, but with it came responsibility. Unlike the Psy Council, the leopards and wolves took the safety and welfare of those under their leadership very seriously. Seriously enough to kill. Changeling justice, but as Lucas had pointed out, it would serve a dual purpose in this case.

And the Psy Council thought changelings stupid. That was their mistake.

Night had fallen during the meeting and it was well past dinner when they made it back to the den. He went with Brenna in spite of the increasing levels of dissonance—proximity in enclosed quarters would only worsen things. But the hunger in him, the raw painful thing that threatened to destroy him, wouldn’t let him walk away.

“I’ll throw something together in the kitchen,” she said as they entered.

He remained in the living area, able to see her moving behind the kitchen counter. The second she turned her back, he took the chance to check the trap he’d placed on her door. Instinct and a need to protect had made him do it. There was something he wasn’t seeing, some link his conscious mind hadn’t yet forged, but his subconscious had, and it was adamant that she was in danger. Or maybe, he simply wanted her safe.

The trap itself wasn’t psychic—he didn’t have the ability to tie his power to an object in that fashion. Instead, he’d created it using basic Arrow tech. The device was embedded in her old-fashioned doorknob, and it read the prints of anyone who entered. If the prints didn’t belong to Brenna, Andrew, Riley, Hawke, or Judd, the device was programmed to send out an alert to his phone. And as Brenna had discovered, he could go from place to place in the blink of an eye. Teleportation weakened him, but a Tk of his particular subdesignation needed very little power to cause catastrophic damage.

He sat back, satisfied the device was functioning.

“Food’s ready.” Brenna walked out and his eyes drifted to the thrust of her breasts under her thin sweater. “Warmed-up leftovers okay with you?”

The hunger he wanted fed had nothing to do with food. “Yes.”

Her smile was bright. “You’re easy to please. Good, because I’m exhausted.”

He slammed up desperate psychic blocks against visions of her in bed, warm, naked, and his. “Let’s make it a quick meal.” They were midway through it when his phone flashed. He glanced at the incoming code but put it down without reading the message.

“Who was that?”

The huskiness in her voice was like sandpaper across his straining flesh. “No one important.”

Curiosity lit up her eyes, but then she shrugged and went back to her dinner. He scrutinized her for several seconds, as he’d never known Brenna to just give up, but she seemed genuinely tired. That made things easier. There were aspects of his life she didn’t need to know about—the Council wouldn’t hesitate to torture her if they thought she had information they wanted.

Her exhaustion was proven by the huge yawn she gave as they were finishing up. “I’m sorry, but I’m beat. Mind if we cut this even shorter?”

It was exactly the out he needed. “Of course not.”

Yet he stood outside her door for long minutes. He was no changeling, but he could smell the feminine heat of her scent, almost taste the lushness of her, his psychic senses multiplying and intensifying the impact of the physical. His fingers curled at the remembered sensation of her skin against his. The compulsion to open the door, walk back in, and take the fatal step into sexual contact was so strong, he had his hand raised when his phone flashed again.

It was a blunt reminder of who and what he was. He didn’t care. He’d crossed too many lines with Brenna to go back now. But he was dangerous to her in his current state. So he answered the call. “I’m on my way.” Only then did he return to his rooms, gather what he needed, and walk silent and unnoticed out of the den.

His vehicle—separate from those owned by the SnowDancers—was hidden near one of the rutted tracks leading out of wolf territory. When he reached it, he found it undisturbed and in perfect condition. The engine started with an almost soundless purr.

A second later, he thought he saw a shadow in the forest. He sent his Tp senses in an outward scan, aware that his body and mind were both functioning at less than optimal levels. Someone could have followed him in the wake of his distraction with Brenna. However, the scan touched nothing but the open minds of forest creatures. Satisfied, he maneuvered the vehicle through the thick darkness of a cloudy night and onto the track.

The telepathic “knock” came when he’d almost reached his destination. I’m here. He eased the car into a single-level street parking slot and got out. What’s important enough to call a meeting in person?

I wanted to talk to both of you, and the comm channels aren’t secure at present—I’m working on getting some new encryption software to block any covert monitoring, the Ghost responded. The Council’s already begun eliminating the most vocal of the agitators.

Judd smelled the biting freshness of oncoming rain as he cut through a children’s park. They knew the risk. Crossing the road, he walked around the church and into the unlit backyard, home to a small graveyard for those who had chosen to lie under the sun rather than be interred in the crypts.

Father Perez sat on the back steps of the church and Judd located the Ghost’s dark shadow against a facing tree. “What did you find out?”

“I didn’t see you arrive,” the Ghost said. “Being out of the PsyNet hasn’t had any appreciable impact on you and your abilities.”

Wrong, but it was an untruth that had tactical value. “I have to get back.” Distance was simply turning up the notch on his need to be with Brenna, to keep her safe. There was a threat to her. His brain was fixated on the idea. But what he didn’t know was whether the threat came from the outside…or from his own killing abilities.

The Ghost took the hint. “This data hasn’t been confirmed yet, but it appears Ashaya Aleine may be forced to start her work from scratch.”

“Why? The lab had to have backup files hidden away,” Perez said.

“The recent loss of several of their top scientists negates the value of any such backups—they alone knew what their notes meant. Unfortunately Aleine’s too well protected.”

Perez sighed. “I was hoping you hadn’t taken that route.” His voice held sorrow. “You kill too easily.”

The Ghost shifted in the darkness. “If I hadn’t removed the scientists from the equation, all our work would have meant nothing. They would’ve begun implanting test subjects within the year. In a decade, we would have become a single hive mind.”

“Not single,” Judd said. “Psy wouldn’t all be equal under Protocol I. There will be puppets and puppet masters.” As an Arrow programmed to kill, Judd knew the truth of what happened when some were given absolute control over others. Power was the most rapacious of drugs.

“And so we spill more blood?” Perez asked. “Is that right?”

“I have no right to judge anyone else, Father.” No matter what the Ghost had done, Judd knew he’d done worse. “Tell me what else you have—quickly.”

By the time Judd left, the chill winter rain was coming down in a steady beat. He let it fall on him, let it wash away the death-soaked taste of this latest meeting. The dehumanizing cruelty that was the Implant Protocol was evil, but in fighting it, Judd knew that they, too, could become evil. The understanding came from some buried part of him, a part inextricably linked to what he felt for Brenna.

The thought further heightened his urgency to return to her. Speeding up his pace, he breathed in the scent of ozone and city. The street was deserted, the glow of the laz-lamps muted by the rain. Walking across, he stepped into the darkness of the park. As a child, he’d never once played in a place like this. His training runs had been supervised, his exercises regimented. Shaping him. Making him.

Pushing aside the memories, he traversed the park with long steady strides, heading for the car he’d left on the other side. He could run the new data crystal the Ghost had passed him in the car’s system, but preferred to wait and do it on his personal organizer, which was double-firewalled against interference.

Movement! The warning shot through his head before he consciously realized what he was seeing. He twisted his body to lessen the damage as the large wolf slammed him to the ground. Air smashed out of his lungs and he had barely enough time to get up his arm before the wolf’s fangs snapped down, going through skin and muscle to hit bone.

Cauterizing the pain, he shoved with enough Tk that the wolf released him, giving him a chance to get back on his feet. His arm hung by his side, useless until he could knit the nerve and muscle together. Bleeding from the arm and from deep gashes in his chest, he arrowed his abilities and forced power into his right fist. When the wolf launched himself a second time, he smashed his fist into the animal’s windpipe. It went down but only for a second before slamming into his chest and bringing him to the ground once again.

Wolf jaws neared, their lethal intent clear—to crush his neck.

Judd had been trying not to kill, certain this was a SnowDancer—and which one. He hadn’t forgotten Riley’s calculating calm at the meeting today. But now he had no choice. He was bleeding too badly. Gathering everything he had, he prepared to punch into the changeling’s mind. The wolf would be dead in about one second flat.