Caressed by Ice

CHAPTER 44

Judd was running full-tilt to the nursery, Hawke at his side, when his phone began to beep in an intense, irregular pattern.

It was linked to the alarm on Brenna’s door.

Screeching to a stop, he used every trick he had to focus despite the number of bodies moving past him. One second. Two. Too damn slow. There. He teleported out. Brenna’s door was closed. He pulled it off using Tk and sent the wide piece of plascrete smashing into the corridor, nearly mowing down another SnowDancer soldier.

Brenna was on the floor, bleeding from cuts on her lip and cheek. He went to pick up her attacker and throw him into the wall, but she shook her head slightly. He froze. The man whirled to face Judd, but he never got the chance to speak. Brenna swept out a leg and smashed him to the ground before jumping on his back and swiping her claws down hard enough to reveal flashes of bone.

The killer screamed.

Judd put him in a telekinetic choke hold. “You don’t have the right to scream.”

Brenna looked up as the man gurgled, desperate to breathe. “You were right—he was there.” A feral snarl as she held him down. “He was the reason I got into that van. He offered me a ride.” Gripping her attacker’s hair, she jerked back his head. “Let the bastard speak.”

Judd released his hold, aware of others arriving at the scene. “I can tear his mind open, download everything he knows. Of course, he’ll be a drooling mess by the end.”

Brenna’s captive coughed and tried to speak. “No. I’ll talk.”

Brenna jerked his hair harder. “So talk, Dieter.”

There was no mercy in her and Judd approved. This man had used his position to prey on those who trusted him. Judd remembered him squatting beside Timothy’s dead body, pretending to help, telling them how perfect the room was if you wanted to surreptitiously dispose of a body, how the killer had to be someone smart.

“I met him a few months before you got taken,” he coughed out, “Santano Enrique.”

Someone hissed in the doorway, sounding more cat than wolf.

Brenna dug her claws into his shoulder, scraping bone. Dieter’s scream was high and shrill, rising above the shriek of the emergency alarm, but she kept him conscious. “Did you give me up to him?”

“Yes.” Dieter coughed up blood and Judd realized he was crushing the man’s internal organs. He forced himself to pull back. This was Brenna’s fight.

“Why?” Betrayal laced her voice. “You were my brothers’ friend. You were Pack.”

“It was a straight business deal. He gave me Rush at a real low price. Made me rich.” Dieter didn’t try for Brenna’s sympathy, as if he knew he’d get none. “All he wanted was a favor now and then.”

“Like picking me up on the way to class,” Brenna whispered, tone raw. “Like telling me I was needed at the den. Did he come back from the grave and ask you to shoot Andrew, too?” Her next move was so fast, Judd almost missed it. She smashed Dieter’s face to the floor, hard enough to cause unconsciousness but not death. The alarm cut off at that same instant.

Getting up, she wiped the blood off her mouth with the back of her hand. “Elias, Sing-Liu,” she said to the two soldiers who’d stopped in the doorway, “take him to the lockup.”

Judd blocked the doorway. “I’ll take him.”

Brenna growled. “You’ll kill him. We need to know what he fed Enrique.”

“I can get that.” Judd could almost taste the man’s death on his lips.

“His execution belongs to Tim’s family.” She stepped around the body to face him. “Tim died. I didn’t.”

Blood for life. Life for life. Changeling justice.

But Judd wasn’t changeling. Dieter’s heart pulsed in his psychic hold. Just one—Brenna gripped the front of his shirt. “Stop.”

He stared at her. “No.” His mind recognized killing, was drawn to the taste of it.

She kissed him, bit down hard on his lower lip. Dissonance crashed into him, combining with the sensory pleasure, the iron-rich taste of blood, and the hunger for violence. It scrambled his pathways for an instant. That instant was enough. When she drew back, he was still homicidal, but he could think past it. “You’re right. We need to know what he knows. I’ll take him.”

This time, she didn’t try to stop him as he hauled the changeling over his shoulder and strode out, Elias by his side. The other man kept growling low in his throat until Judd dumped Dieter in the lockup and secured the door. “Does he need a healer?” Judd wanted him very alive for the questioning.

Elias’s eyes were flat. “He needs to be dead, but I’ll call Lara. It might be a while if there were injuries in the nursery.”

Judd had forgotten the alarm in the emotional chaos of the attack on Brenna. “Are you capable of guarding him? I know he was your friend.”

“I want to tear him to pieces.” His claws were out. “But I won’t let him die—Tim’s family deserves the honor of ripping his two-faced heart from his fucking chest.”

Accepting that, Judd left to return to Brenna. He found the apartment full. Surprisingly, Lara herself was looking at Brenna’s cuts, while Hawke asked her questions and her brothers swore in low, continuous bursts. Outside, someone was already trying to repair the door he’d busted. He heard Sing-Liu’s cool voice giving the orders.

“Judd.” Brenna’s face lit up the second she saw him. She went to hold out a hand but dropped it halfway.

He grabbed it anyway. Damn the consequences. “The nursery?” he asked Lara.

“Looked worse than it was,” she said. “No kids hurt but that was by sheer luck. If a pup had crawled into the doorway when it came down—” She shook her head.

“A diversion,” Judd said. “He had to get D’Arn away from Brenna.”

“D’Arn’s already beating himself up about it.” Riley blew out a breath. “But Dieter knew what he was doing—I would’ve taken off for the nursery, too. Bren can look after herself, pups can’t.”

Brenna shot her big brother a smile at the vote of confidence, before returning her attention to Judd. “I was telling Hawke how it happened. I left to grab my comm equipment from my room and when I came out, he was standing here.” Her voice shook, not with fear but anger. “He smirked at me, said no one’s here to protect you now, little girl. He had that injector in his hand.” She pointed to the small cylindrical object lying in a corner.

A wall hanging crashed to the floor, the tough plasglass cover splintering.

As everyone else turned toward the sound, Brenna squeezed his hand. The warning worked. He pulled his rage under control, but it was an uncertain control at best. “When did you remember about the van?”

“That smirk.” She almost spit out the words. “It made me want to kill and then I knew why.”

Hawke kicked aside a piece of debris on the floor—a large splinter from the door. “No wonder you blocked it out. One of us served you up to die.” His eyes had gone pure wolf.

“Yes.” Her tone softened, grew sad. “He killed Tim, tried to kill Drew, gave me up…and for what? Money.”

“I’ll find out what he knows.” Hawke glanced at Judd. “Can you help?”

He thought of how Dieter’s heart had felt in his hands, so slick, so crushable. “Give me a week. I’d kill him right now.”

“It’ll take him longer than that to heal the damage Brenna tells me she did.” Lara’s tone was without its normal gentleness. “I’ve got to go stitch him up now.”

Hawke went with Lara. Judd looked at Drew and Riley. “Give us a few minutes.”

Both men left after a short, tense silence. Judd took Brenna into her room and closed the door. She stood with her back to it as he leaned over her, palms braced on either side of her head. “You’re okay.” Not a question, because even bruised, she was standing strong.

“You’re not.” She took a handkerchief from her pocket and dabbed at his jaw and he realized he was bleeding from his ear canal again. Worry laid another bruise in her eyes, turning the areola of blue almost indigo. “You can’t wait much longer.”

Taking it from her, he finished the task and shoved the cloth into his jeans pocket. “You didn’t need my help.”

She smiled, teeth sharp. “I knew you’d come. That’s why I fought so hard. I knew that by the time I got tired, you’d be there.” Her smile faded. “Go, calm down. I’m okay.”

He left her and it was the hardest thing he’d ever done. The urge to crush out Dieter’s life beat in him with every pulse of his own heart, a pounding echo that knew nothing of logic or sense. It just wanted justice. In his current state, he couldn’t even act on his decision to break Silence. He was too unbalanced.

Walking out into the snowy spread of the inner perimeter, he attempted to work off some of his energy by going through a number of strictly choreographed hand-to-hand combat moves. He had to wipe more blood from his nose before he began. The color was close to black—the countdown was reaching the final stages.

When Tai materialized out of the forest an hour into his session, he had to force himself not to react with unwarranted aggression. His control was still fragmented, his rage to kill a trapped beast inside him. “What are you doing here?”

“I was heading back to the den after a run. Been out since this morning.” He thrust a hand through his hair. “I don’t suppose you could teach me some of what you were doing.”

“It requires discipline,” he replied, realizing Tai had no awareness of the chaos that had ruled the den less than an hour ago. For some reason, that knowledge broke through his anger. “You can’t fight instinctively—you need to think before you react.”

Tai put his hands into his pockets, bunching up his shoulders. “You think I can’t do it?”

“I think you’d be going against your nature, but that’s not a bad thing. It’ll teach you to focus and channel the abilities you already have.”

Tai’s grin was young, cocky. “Yeah, I’m not too bad, huh? I got in a few shots with you and you’re a lieutenant.”

“True.”

The smile faded and Tai took his hands out of his pockets. “Thanks for not ratting me out to anyone. About going clawed, I mean.”

Judd remembered Lara’s advice. He just listened.

“I got frustrated and lost it,” Tai admitted. “I apologize.”

“Fine.” Judd jerked his head. “If you want to learn something, follow me.”

Tai came to stand beside him. “What do I do?”

“Think. Stand in place in this position.” He showed the position. “And think about what your body is capable of, what will push it to the limit, what won’t. To use a tool effectively, you must first know its capabilities.”

Tai took a deep breath. “My body as a tool? Okay, I get it. I think.”

Oddly, teaching Tai discipline brought Judd’s own darkness under almost total control. By the time Brenna found him a few hours later, as the trailing edges of the day faded into night, he was thinking relatively clearly.

“I’m sorry,” she said after Tai left, pulling her thick coat tighter around her body. “I needed to be with you. Stupid after I acted so strong and unaffected by the attack. I should go—our being close will hurt you.”

“Never be sorry for coming to me.” Picking up his discarded jacket, he shrugged into it. “Do you want to go for a walk?”

She nodded, lower lip trembling for an instant before she got it under control. “I’m such a baby. I was fine as long as I was cleaning up, but as soon as I stopped, I got so angry. Almost as if I was picking up everyone else’s anger, too.”

He matched her smaller strides as they walked, choosing to focus on the lighter aspect of her comment—they’d discuss the other later. “You might be a baby, but you’re mine. And I like babysitting.”

Her laugh was surprised. “Very funny. Anyone else saying that would be dodging claws right now.”

He thought back to D’Arn and Sing-Liu’s interaction the day of the war games. Finally, he grasped what had seemed so puzzling then. But the similarity was only on the surface. He and Brenna were different in one crucial respect, a difference they had both gone to great lengths to avoid discussing—the lack of a mating bond between them.

He was a psychic being. He would have seen it had it been present in any form. That it wasn’t, was a sign that though they might be drawn to each other, they weren’t made to fit. He didn’t give a damn. He was keeping her.

“What was Tai doing with you anyway?” she asked when he remained silent.

“Tai makes a good student. But when did I become a teacher?”

“You’re a lieutenant, a big brother to the young ones.”

“Ah.” That made sense. “They trust me.”

“Yes.”

“I could damage them.”

“But you won’t.”

Such faith for a renegade from the Net. “It’s time.”

She understood at once. “Here?” They were in a very small clearing between towering redwoods. “It’s dark.”

“It’s as good a place as any. And there’s no need for light where I’m going.” He took a seat on a fallen log after brushing off the snow and Brenna sat beside him. “I might not respond if you call me. Don’t panic.”

“I won’t.” Her voice trembled. She took a deep breath. “I won’t.” Far stronger this time.

“You also have to be prepared for the possibility that this might not work, that we’ll have to separate permanently.”

Her skin paled. “It’ll work.”

“This time stubbornness won’t do it,” he said, attempting to be gentle but knowing he sounded harsh. “It’s lasted so long because of how solid it is. The conditioning reprograms the most fundamental aspects of our brains. To break full Silence is one thing—but to make use of an isolated aspect of it as I intend to, might be another altogether.” What he didn’t want to tell her was that the attempt could prove fatal. But he would not lie to her. “If I do it wrong, I could trigger the most extreme level of dissonance.”

“Are you telling me you could die?”

“Yes.”

Her face twisted. “You can’t die. You’re mine.”

“I have no intention of doing anything wrong and every intention of surviving.” He was an Arrow, and for the first time, that might be a good thing. “I was trained to circumvent and use pain to my own advantage. Trust me.”

Swallowing, she nodded. “I know I can’t help, but—”

“You can help.” It was something he’d realized during the calm fostered by teaching Tai. “After putting Andrew’s heart back together, I recovered far quicker than I should have in terms of physical strength. I think it was because of you.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.” There was no bond, but she reached him in ways no one else ever had. “If you ever find your true mate,” he said, “I won’t allow you freedom.” He didn’t have such goodness in him.

She scowled. “I’m a one-Psy woman.”

Satisfied with the acceptance, he nodded. “Keep in physical contact with me.”

She blanched. “It hurts you when I touch.”

“Because I’m conditioned to see it as a danger. It is one—touch anchors me to you, which threatens to break Silence.”

Swallowing, she nodded and clasped her hand over his shoulder. “The first thing I’m going to do after you come back is pet you all over for as long as I want. Promise you’ll let me.”

“Promise.” With that sensual goal as his guiding light, he closed his eyes and went deep into his mind. Deeper than he’d ever before gone. What he saw threatened to shake his confidence in his ability to use the Protocol to his advantage.