Shards of Hope

Chapter 55

THE HUMAN FEMALE Blake had kidnapped was unconscious when Vasic led a team to rescue her. “She’ll live,” the teleporter told Zaira and Aden afterward, the three of them standing near one of the new houses in the valley. “A cut across one breast, psychological torture, but no permanent physical damage, though she would’ve died from lack of water within the next day.”

“He wanted Beatrice to kill her.” Zaira’s voice vibrated with withheld fury.

Aden brushed his fingers over hers as they stood side by side. “He’ll pay for what he did.”

Glancing to his left and down before looking back up, Vasic said, “None of the teleporters in the squad can get to him. Blake was well trained in telepathic cloaking.”

It took Aden a second to realize his friend had looked automatically toward where his gauntlet had been on his left forearm before the amputation. You miss the gauntlet, he said telepathically while he considered how to track down the rogue and murderous Arrow. It wasn’t only that Blake was a threat to innocent people—he could do major damage to the squad’s reputation, which would feed back into the Arrows’ ability to live their lives.

Winter gray eyes met his. I became used to having easy, immediate access to various systems. He took out a small organizer. I’ll adapt. A pause before he said, “I have the details of Blake’s office in the valley and his quarters at Central Command. I’ll check out Command first, since he spent more time there.” He teleported out.

Able to sense Zaira’s frustration, Aden closed his hand around her own. “We’ll find him. He’s well trained, but he’s being hunted by the entire squad.” It was rare for Arrows to hunt their own, but when they did, the pursuit was relentless. “He won’t have time to catch a breath, much less do damage.”

Fingers curling around his own, Zaira gritted her teeth. “I want to be part of the team hunting him. Right now, Persephone is out of my reach but I can do something productive about Blake.”

“The operation is already under Amin’s command, and you have visitors in Venice to keep an eye on.” BlackSea had a dangerous advantage in the watery city.

“I just feel like we’re losing the battle against evil.” She leaned her body against his on those words, and at that instant, Aden realized they had any number of eyes on them. Arrows and children.

Weaving his fingers through her own, he looked down into her face. “You saved two lives today. Evil didn’t win there.” And it won’t win in our fight to be together.

The fire flickered in her gaze. Raising her hand, she laid her fingers against his jaw.

A public claim. A declaration of intent.

PAX Marshall was arrogant but he wasn’t stupid. His vehicle was an armor-plated tank. Safe in most circumstances. Except against a man who had the growing ability to control metal and machines.

Waiting until Pax was on a quiet road outside of the Marshall estate in Vermont, Dev pulled over behind him, focused on the other vehicle’s engine . . . and Pax’s car stopped moving.

He could see the Psy male attempting to reboot the onboard computer as Dev got out, walked to his car, and knocked on his window.

Pax looked at him with cool blue eyes, a weapon no doubt in his hand, but he opened the door and got out. “Is this how you usually arrange a meeting?” he asked as he buttoned his dark blue suit jacket, his hands as elegant as his features and the cut of his blond hair.

“A necessity.” Dev kept his hands in the open as Pax had done.

Pax’s upper-class English accent was clipped as he said, “The necessity being?”

Dev told him, watching his face for any indication of guilt or otherwise, but Pax Marshall had the expressionless face down to an art. “I see,” the other man said. “You realize I’m not lacking in intelligence. Why would I send in a black ops team emblazoned with our well-known emblem?”

“Precisely because you’re smart—smart enough to run a double bluff.” Dev had done his research, knew that the reason Pax was CEO of the Marshall Group despite his youth was that he had a way of doing the unexpected, leaving his competitors stunned and off balance.

“Then it appears we are at an impasse.”

“Guess so.” He couldn’t get a read on Pax, but he knew one thing. “If it wasn’t you, I suggest you track down the perpetrators, or the next time, your plane might be the vehicle that stops moving.” Dev couldn’t actually affect objects that distant or large yet, but Pax had no need to know that.

“Do you have the DNA profiles of the ones who left behind blood?”

Dev handed them over.

Two hours after he and Pax parted ways, word came that all the men on that list, plus two others, had been found shot point-blank in the back of the head. Pax sent him a short message not long afterward: They were not ours and they knew nothing beyond the strict parameters of their mission, which was to abduct the children and leave behind a witness. Contractors should really take care when choosing clients. Your children are safe.

Dev took everything the other man said with a grain of salt. The double-bluff possibility still applied; from everything Dev knew, Pax Marshall was ruthless enough to kill his own people to make a point.

ZAIRA spent the remaining daylight hours making sure she knew the exact locations of every water-based changeling in Venice. The task was complicated by the fact that they didn’t exactly stand out or call attention to themselves, but thanks to the groundwork laid by Arrows since the squad began, she had back-end access to a number of very secure databases. She also had a network of informants in the city.

She’d started putting that network in place the instant she was assigned the Venice command. Marjorie and Naoshi had always assumed they’d be in command when Venice went active, but logistically, they couldn’t run Venice as a fully functioning base of Arrow operations and maintain the complex system of safe houses around the world. The latter was a task at which they were expert and that no one else could do. That, at least, was what Aden had told them—and it was all categorically true. Marjorie and Naoshi had long ago proven their exceptional ability to settle at-risk Arrows into safe new lives.

What Aden didn’t point out was that his parents, despite their undisputable skill and position as initiators of the rebellion, were, in many ways, stuck in the past and in the old way of doing things. In contrast, Zaira, like many other Arrows who’d come of age with Aden, understood that while fear was a weapon, even better was information—and not just from Psy sources.

It was that kind of a commander Aden had needed in Venice.

After she kept her word and paid the first few scared informants as promised, others had started to pass over pieces of data. According to one of her long-term and more talkative informants, word on the street was that “the scary Psy chick is all about business—don’t mess with her and she’ll treat you square. Cross her and maybe you find your ass floating in a canal one dark night.”

As far as street reps went, Zaira was pleased with hers.

In the end, she calculated she’d identified eighty-five to ninety percent of the water changelings in the city. The remainder had to have come in via no known transport options, never registered to receive any services, and drawn zero notice. Miane Levèque and her guards failed only on the last factor—and Zaira knew that had been on purpose.

The BlackSea alpha had wanted to make her presence felt.

Now, as Zaira pulled herself onto the balcony outside the hotel room where Miane Levèque slept tonight, she didn’t for an instant forget that the other woman was a deadly predator.

The lock on the balcony door was more secure than she’d expected, but Zaira had always been good at getting into places. Waiting in silence for ten minutes until she was certain no one was moving in the room beyond, the night hushed around her, she slipped inside. Her eyes already adjusted to the darkness, she saw that she was in an elegant living area. No one else breathed in the room.

She knew that there was, however, a guard on the door directly outside.

Zaira had checked the hallway before she came in this way.

Conscious of the acute hearing possessed by so many changelings, she made her way to the bedroom door in absolute quiet and listened. No movement.

Slipping inside, she saw Miane’s form beneath the sheets in the large bed. Most people would have believed her asleep. “Your body is too tense.”

The BlackSea alpha’s hand reached out to turn on a bedside lamp. Its glow was soft rather than cutting, but Zaira was prepared regardless. She’d narrowed her eyes so as not to be overwhelmed by a sudden change from dark to light.

“Really?” Miane said. “I thought I’d controlled the tension.”

“Enough to fool the majority of people.” Zaira leaned against the wall by the door, arms folded. “You don’t need the gun you’ve got in your other hand. If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead.”

“Are you sure?” The other woman sat up, the sheet sliding away to reveal a slip in a pale color Zaira thought might be called champagne. Her eyes held Zaira’s and they weren’t black as they’d been during their initial meeting, but a lighter shade.

“Yes,” she said, as Miane got out of bed and, placing the gun on the bedside table, pulled on the robe that had been thrown over a nearby chair. That robe matched the slip. “I’m an assassin. You’re well trained and dangerous, but you don’t expect me to come up behind you and snap your spine.”

“You’d have to get that close to me first.”

“I could’ve done it two hours ago, while you were visiting the elderly human who lives in the neighboring district.”

Miane went preternaturally still. “You followed me.”

“Of course.” Zaira wasn’t about to allow a threat to wander freely around her city. “The human is a relative? Your features are distinctive.”

“My grandmother,” Miane said, and Zaira knew she’d only shared that because it was something Zaira could easily discover on her own. “Would you like a coffee?”

Zaira stepped aside to let the BlackSea alpha pass into the other room, careful to follow at a pace that allowed her eyes to adjust to the much brighter light Miane had flicked on. “No coffee for me.”

Waiting while the other woman prepared one for herself, she wasn’t surprised when the door opened, the big male named Malachai in the doorway. His eyes went to Zaira, grew hard. “Miane?”

“I’m fine, Mal. Zaira decided to drop by for a visit.”

“Next time, use the door,” Malachai said, his voice holding the distinct edge of a growl.

Zaira kept her silence and wondered what sea creature growled. Or perhaps that was the human part of Malachai.

Laughing softly, Miane shook her head. “Think of her as another me. I’m sure you’ll understand her much better.”

Expression unchanged, Malachai met the crystalline clarity of Miane’s hazel eyes, something silent passing between them before he withdrew. “I don’t normally have guards,” the BlackSea leader told Zaira. “However, with the rash of disappearances”—her mouth tightened—“the lieutenants are edgy.”

Zaira wondered how the other woman had accurately guessed her thought processes. “You don’t feel their presence is a comment on your abilities and skills?”

“No. I wouldn’t be BlackSea’s First—its alpha—if they doubted my strength.” Coffee prepared, she took a seat on one of the sofas, gestured for Zaira to take the one opposite. “I’m glad you decided to take me up on my invitation.”

“Why did you offer it?”

“Partly because the Arrows would be a good ally to have.” She held the cup balanced on one knee, cold fury in her next words. “If the bastards who’ve taken my people hadn’t thought to disfigure them, your teleporters could’ve brought them all home by now.”

“I’d have made the same decision in your shoes.” Done whatever it took to protect her family.

“But,” Miane added, “I also did it because you’re the first woman I’ve ever met who reminds me of me.”

“You live an emotion-rich life.” While Zaira had spent most of hers in chilling Silence.

Miane drank some of her coffee. “BlackSea is unique. Some of us are very similar to other changelings in our interactions, while others are loners in a way even the feline changelings would struggle to understand. Our emotions are sometimes not what you would expect.”

Zaira thought about the squad, about how many walked alone even while part of a group. “I think you’ll find more Arrows who understand you.”

“Perhaps.” Eyes gone obsidian, the other woman said, “BlackSea doesn’t trust easily and it’s clear Arrows don’t either, but here we must. Someone is hunting my people and yours.” A grimness to her tone. “I’ve sent word across BlackSea about little Persephone. It’ll take time to get to those who live in the very deep, or in the most distant places on this Earth, but of the hundreds of confirmations I’ve received so far, none have caught any glimpse of her.”

In the ensuing hours, the two of them went over theories and possibilities and split tasks so they wouldn’t waste time following leads in areas that weren’t their strengths. Zaira wouldn’t normally have made such an arrangement with a relative stranger, and she knew neither would Miane, but the alpha’s anger over Persephone’s fate was visceral and it spoke to the same in Zaira.

“I am angry for and worried about all those who’ve been taken,” Miane said at one point, her bones sharp against her skin. “But to imprison a child? That is against every rule of engagement. It would cost them nothing to release a child so young. That they haven’t makes them monsters who deserve no mercy.”

Gut instinct told Zaira that Miane could be trusted on this point; she and the BlackSea alpha were very much on the same page. If she was wrong, she’d deal with it after the girl was located. Until then, the Arrows and BlackSea would have a temporary working alliance.

It was well past midnight by the time they finished.

“Aden,” Miane said as she made herself a second cup of coffee. “He belongs to you, yes?”

“Yes.” He’d given himself to her and she would not release him from that promise. Not even if she failed in her bid to live this new existence. That was why she’d asked Vasic to make sure she was eliminated should she become a deadly threat either as a result of the madness—because there remained a chance it lived in her genes, a pitiless intruder who could strike at any time—or because of her violent possessiveness.

The teleporter had looked at her with those wintery eyes, said, “He’ll never forgive me. Or you.”

“But he’ll be safe.” What Zaira feared more than anything was that the madness would make her turn on Aden. “Will you do it?”

“Only if his life is under imminent threat.”

Zaira had to be satisfied with that and hope Vasic never had to fulfill his promise. If he did, Aden wouldn’t forgive it; he’d lose his closest friend as well as his lover in one savage blow. Zaira would’ve asked someone else but Vasic was the only one she trusted to watch out for Aden’s interests above all else.

Evil didn’t win there. And it won’t win in our fight to be together.

No, it won’t, Zaira vowed, but part of her knew that the choice might be wrenched out of her hands, rage swamping her in black fog that drowned out all reason.